A Certain Affinity Towards Fire
by Yaodai
Summary: Post!GoF. Vernon Dursley decided he's done with all that craziness around his nephew and called for help. The exorcism actually worked. The Order of Phoenix decided to do the only logical thing under these circumstances - to kidnap the exorcist! Bon was not amused.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**  
**Where Vernon Dursley was looking for a specialist**

For something that was supposed to work in the shadows, far from curious stares of normal people, the building was ridiculously big and flashy. On the other hand, the whole organization seemed to have something to do with a school. And a prestigious one, no less, so Vernon Dursley didn't know what he was supposed to think.

It all started a few weeks ago, when he overheard a conversation between two workers of his. It was during lunch break, so he had no reason to snap at them for talking about ridiculous things. How they spend their free time was completely their business. But he couldn't stop himself from listening either. It was a little bit too similar to what was going in his own house.

Apparently, one of the workers had a certain issue at his place. Things were moving on its own or changing color, his family was getting more snappish and depressed with each passing day and he felt like something heavy was stuck in his chest. For Vernon Dursley it all seemed way too similar to his own situation to just wave hand at ridiculousness. So he stick even after the man started talking about exorcisms. It seemed that he contacted somebody at the local church and the priest there gave him a business card and told to head to the nearest True Cross Academy building.

Vernon frowned slightly, because he knew perfectly well it was a school, a very good one too, but the fee was ridiculously high and the level of achievements to get there on stipendium were even higher. And what could possibly connect a school of that reputation and some insane freakishness? He was pretty sure the school where his nephew was attending was placed somewhere far in Scotland, while the English branch of TCA was located in London and had some smaller building in Wales or someplace like that. But from what he overheard, they were just the place to head for, when a normal person had not normal sort of problem.

"I never thought," the man finished his story. "I could ever be comfortable at my house anymore! But after these guys shoved up and did their thing, suddenly everything is just perfect!"

"Maybe it was just psychological?" the guy he was talked to pointed out. "You know, they made you believe that everything is fine?"

"Whatever they did, it worked!"

Vernon snorted and shook his head then, because these people were clearly just stupid, but for the next few days, he couldn't help himself, but think. His nephew was a freak, magical one, but he didn't seemed to be all that different from floating things around. He also seemed to be worse than usually and something heavy was definitely in the air at Privet Drive nr 4.

While Vernon was never a very religious person, because he was pretty sure that a man was supposed to deal with problems on his own instead of looking for help from some higher powers, there wasn't anything wrong with people who were trying to do so. And right now, he was tempted to do just that.

And one hot summer day he found himself wandering into the TCA building, looking for nobody else than an exorcist. It was ridiculous and he felt ashamed for even trying to do such a thing, but since he wasn't planning on talking about it to just anybody… it should be fine.

Finally, he found his way towards a room, where certain sort of problems was supposed to be resolved. The place was elegant as any other part of giant building, with a very high ceiling and wide windows. To tell the truth, it looked somewhat like a bank. Several desks were set, shielded from each other enough to provide privacy and people on the other side were wearing some sort of uniforms. It all looked surprisingly professional and normal, compared to weirdoes from Harry's world.

Well, at least these people seemed to know, what they were doing, even if the whole stuff seemed to be rather ridiculous to normal people, Vernon decided. Then he carefully headed towards one of the desks, where a professional looking woman was seated. She was wearing her hair in tight bun and had glasses, but it was a simple silver cross – the one and only piece of jewelry she was wearing on her person – that made Vernon decide to talk to her. Because exorcists were supposed to have some sort of religious symbols, right?

"Excuse me…" he started, awkwardly, not knowing how to ask and not make himself to look like a fool. Because what if she was not part of this religious weirdness?

She looked at him shortly, then nodded.

"Do please sit, sir." She said, her voice calm and loud just enough for him to hear. "I believe you're in a right place."

"And what place is that?"

"You have a certain problem that you could not explain by any other way, am I right?"

Vernon grunted something in agreement, but finally sat in the chair in front of her desk. It seemed he was in the right place after all.

"And I promise, we can help you with that problem. "

"Well, yes, about that…" he started. "You see, I hold a really important position and if that sort of stuff get out… no offense, but that would be just really bad for my reputation."

"Do not be worried," the woman on the other side of the desk smiled slightly. "All the informations exchanged here is confidential. There is no way for anyone at all to learn about your problems, sir."

"I hope so," Vernon grunted under his breath. They exchanged names after that, but he managed to forget hers as soon as it left her lips. Not that he planned to deal with her anymore that was absolutely needed anyway.

"So, can you tell us what's troubling your family, Mister Dursley?"

"This might sound ridiculous..." he started, but then stopped, feeling utterly and completely embarrassed.

"Do not worry, Mister Dursley. We definitely aren't the one to judge anybody. you can tell us everything you think is strange or unnatural."

"And then you can do something with it?"

"We would certainly try," she nodded.

He chewed his lip for a moment, thinking. The weirdoes from the mumbo-jumbo place definitely seemed to be way more sane than the freaks that used so called magic.

"It's my nephew," he finally said.

"Something happened to him?"

"No! It's..." he went silent, unable to find the right words to describe it. "Actually, I have no idea what happened to him."

"Do please describe it as much as you can. Were there any changes in behavior?"

"Yes," He nodded. "At least I Think so... it's all complicated, you see..."

And then, he told her the whole story. He definitely wasn't supposed to do so. The freaks told him that on several occasions. But letting the secret go, it was like a huge stone suddenly dropped from his back, letting him breathe for real the first time in years. He told her everything, from the very start. About how his wife found the little freak on the doorstep in the end of autumn all these years ago, about the actually not dead dark wizard who murdered Petunia's family, leaving only the kid behind, about the brute that came one day to collect the brat and used his weird stuff on his son... Everything. Including how odd the kid was acting this summer.

She was listening silently, sometimes making notes, but mostly just looking at him, her face completely professional. Not even a slight twitch betrayed her through, which was good, Vernon supposed. He would be hated to be laughed at.

"I mean, he was having nightmares from time to time, like all kids, but this summer... it's got really ridiculous. Every night at least one time. Nobody in the house is able to get any rest at all because of that."

"Is he talking when he's asleep?"

"Screaming, mostly. But sometimes..." Vernon shuddered. "Sometimes it's getting worse. He's speaking, but this..."

"Not his voice?" the woman guessed.

"Yes," he nodded slowly. "Then, you do know what is going on?"

"At this point, we can only guess. But we will definitely send somebody to see if we can learn something more."

"Something more...?"

"It's rather unusual case, to tell the truth," she said, putting her notebook away. "But I believe, we can help your family and your nephew."

"You can get rid of that...magic stuff?"

"I cannot tell at this moment. In a few hours you should receive a call, then we can decide on a date that is comfortable for you and your family."

"That's pretty... quick." Vernon blinked.

"The time is usually very important," she said. "Let me warn you, through. Many of exorcist do not look at all like usual priests. So do not feel offended if they are not what you were expecting. I promise, we are taking you and your case extremely seriously."

Vernon Dursley left the True Cross Academy borders feeling somewhat strange, but hopeful. Now he had to just inform his family and the freak what was about to happen…

And it went as well as he expected it to.

xxx

"You did what?!" There were times when Even one Harry Potter got the rights to scream bloody murder at his family and be excused for doing so. Like, for example, right now. Even aunt Petunia seemed to agree with his point of view this time, which was only a little less abstract than the thing Vernon Dursley said a moment ago.

"I called a specialist, boy" Uncle Vernon growled. "You're disturbing our night rest, no mention lives with that whole thing."

"So what, you think one meeting with a shrink would take care of everything?!"

"Not a shrink. An exorcist."

"You. Are. Kidding me!" Harry moaned. Because that was not what he expected to get from his oh so very normal family at all. For the starters, they were supposed to be normal and mundane, to the point of being more boring than Proffesor Binns and his history lessons. Well, what a surprise, they managed to grow raving mad just during one school year.

"No, I'm not!" Uncle Vernon growled back, like it was an answer for all the questions.

"But you...you hate that stuff! You hate magic and supernatural, and everything else that's weird!"

"And an exorcist is exactly the right man for this job!" Vernon said. "You like it or not, you're meeting with him and you letting him do whatever he find fancy enough to wave in your face!"

And that ended the discussion if there even was one. Harry returned to his room with resigned sigh on his lips. For a little moment he toyed with the idea of writing about the whole bright idea to one of his friends or maybe Sirius, but then he shook his head and lied down on the bed. It was hopeless anyway. Besides, no muggle could just exorcise magic out of a wizard, Harry was pretty sure about that. So he could just go obediently through the whole ordeal and then roll his eyes at Vernon. At least it would be something more interesting than gardening.

* * *

**A/N:** Hi there! I accidentally jumped right into AnE fandom and my plotbunnies decided to use the opportunity...  
The whole idea of exorcising stuff in HP universe amuse me to no end. So I started to toy around with it, just to check out what I can do.  
I'm not native speaker, so my grammar can be flunky from time to time. Trying my hardest, but stuff happens. Do not be afraid to point out mistakes, pointing mistakes out is very helpful thing to do!


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Hi there! Thank you for warm welcome and all the reviews, favs & follows! It really makes me happy! ^^  
Also, special thanks to ToxicKittySaurus for poking at this chapter and pointing out a few (or a tad more) issues with my English. Thank you so much!

**Chapter 2**  
**The Exorcist**

Few days after Vernon Dursley decided to take action and ventured into TCA territory, the exorcists arrived in the overwhelming number of two. And they were not what perfectly normal family of Dursley's expected at all. While the short middle–aged man with broad shoulders seemed to be more or less normal, the other one happened to be somewhat… controversial.

"You really going to tell me that this kid... are you even taking me serious?!" Vernon Dursley growled, already red on the face and furious. Dudley decided he would better leave home about now, because the last time his father was so mad at somebody it ended up with his aunt floating under the ceiling. Having his own share of trauma cause by magic in close proximity to his father screaming, running away seemed like the sanest thing to do. So he did just that, sneaking away just a minute after the exorcists entered the house.

"I promise you, mister Dursley, that we are taking your case extremely seriously." The older man – Joseph O'something he was called – sighed, while the young man ventured deeper into the house with Petunia supervision, to talk to the Potter boy. "Suguro might not look like somebody you would want to trust, but he's truly talented. He actually managed to get a higher position than me in only a few years, while I spend decades on polishing my skills to climb the ladder to where I'm now."

"Really hard to believe, looking at him." Vernon grimaced. "He looks like a menace!"

"Quite so," the man nodded in agreement. "If I didn't know it for the fact I wouldn't believe that the young man is going to be head of a temple of all things!"

"Head of a temple?"

"Buddhist one, I think," he shrugged. "Or something like that, I'm always getting lost, in Japan they tend to overcomplicate these things. It is called Vidyaraja Dharani and its members are quite popular in our Japanese branch."

"Aren't exorcist supposed to be catholic?"

"Not really." the old man shook his head. "Well, in the old times, in the Europe, maybe... but compared to the East, there's not that much to do. There you can never tell if the cat you kicked out of your doorstep was really a cat or some sort of spirit. Madness, I tell you!"

"So… you're saying he's actually good at these things… whatever you're planning to do here?"

"Obviously! While his temple joined the True Cross Order not that long ago, it already had long tradition of training exorcists on its own. So, Mr. Suguro while obviously young was practicing almost as long as he lives."

Vernon still wasn't exactly happy, but decided to see the things through anyway. If somebody spotted the ridiculous teen while he was here Vernon just could use the old, good story about St. Brutus and tell people that was some sort of Harry's friend from there. Or something like that. Because while he was clearly unhappy with people the troublesome kid was hanging out, he couldn't control him all the time, right?

xxx

So. Here it was. The day, when some crazy guy, or maybe just somebody looking for easy money would wave all kinds of crap around his head, mumbling nonsense and then talk Uncle Vernon to pay a lot of money. And the next day Harry would definitely fell Dursley's opinion about spending the money on him. Like he asked for something like that.

Harry huffed. Why on Earth couldn't they just leave him alone? His friends definitely hadn't problem at all with that sort of stuff. Nobody, just nobody was answering his letters. And he tried so many times to contact just anybody! In act of desperation he wrote even to Mrs. Weasley, but silence was the only answer he ever received.

And the dreams were getting worse. Cedric wasn't the only one haunting him and Harry really wasn't sure how could he possibly manage to survive till the beginning of the school year.

Sudden knock on the doors startled him and he almost fell out of his bed.

"What now?" he asked loud enough, so Aunt Petunia, or whoever was on the other side could hear him.

The answer was rather simple: "Exorcism."

"Uh... come in, I guess?" Harry blinked, trying to keep his face neutral.

But then the doors opened and his jaw dropped, because that wasn't what he expected at all. An exorcist in his mind was some sort of middle-aged man, gray on his temples and balding slightly, waving around his cross and other stuff. That or some other rather amusing image.

Instead, he received high, muscular Asian guy barely older than him, with bright Mohawk and a piercing and vicious stare that would make even Snape sweat.

Harry couldn't help it.

"This is some sort of joke?"

"No," there was a shake of head. The wild brown–yellow hair after that looked even wilder if that was physically possible. "I really am an exorcist."

"And got papers to prove it?" Harry raised eyebrow. Because the big guy, if you ignore his choice of style, looked absolutely normal. Well, his clothes seemed to be a bit odd, but only because of the weather. It was way too hot for walking around in a coat, especially a dark one, but that was exactly what the exorcist was wearing. Strange one too, like somebody decided to cross over military jacket with church vestments.

A smirk came with answer to his question. "Actually, yes."

"Okay, wow." Harry blinked. This was not what he expected. "So uh... what exactly are you going to do?"

"Talk a lot," The exorcist answered in the matter of fact voice. "Find yourself some sort of a book or something. Or die of boredom, whatever you find fancy."

Harry blinked again. That definitely was not like anything he expected. And was somewhat anticlimactic.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah," he answered and then decided that pushing Harry further inside the room by poking him on the forehead was a good idea.

It wasn't.

Harry wasn't sure what exactly happened. He was about to scream at the guy, or push back or do something, but... he was too late. The moment the exorcist touched his forehead; there was loud crack and a flash of light.

Harry was merely startled by the thing, while the guy ended up shaking his hand and spitting out long string of words that sounded like profanities. Even if Harry couldn't understand Japanese at all, he was pretty sure it was the most vulgar thing he ever heard.

"Well, screw me!" The exorcist finally switched back to English. "I was pretty sure somebody was pulling my leg, but well, shit!"

"That... never happened before," Harry mumbled, still startled. Not that anybody actually was poking him by surprise all that often, but he was pretty sure nobody else got hurt while touching him. "You alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I just got the answer I was looking for."

"And what you were looking for?"

"If there's some nasty shit around you. Well, surprise, you're giving piggyback to some nasty piece of crap!"

Harry would like to tell it wasn't true, that it was just some sort of a coax to milk a lot of money out of uncle Vernon. But he couldn't argue with facts, and these made themselves quite hard to miss just a mere minute ago. He wasn't even sure if it was magic, or something else.

"And you can get rid of it?" he finally asked.

"Right now I can only guess what this is. And exclude a handful of things that your unwanted guest definitely isn't," the man grimaced. "But there's still a shitload of options."

"Oh..."

"So... this can take up to several hours and I believe we weren't introduced. Ryuji Suguro."

"Harry Potter, but you probably know that already."

"Read the report, yes. Care to tell me where you got that fancy scar?"

Harry suddenly felt very, very cold.

"What do you mean?"

"Your scar. The malevolent energy is concentrated right there," Suguro explained in a flat voice. "Felt sort of like violent spirit, but not exactly."

Harry felt like he really, really needed to sit down. Dark spots were already dancing before his eyes and the colors suddenly escaped his world, leaving it all green and silent.

"...kid! Crap, kid, breathe!"

Harry blinked. Why that Suguro guy had an arm wrapped around him? And when exactly he moved close enough to his bed to sit down?

"Breathe slowly," the exorcist said. "And head between your knees, that helps too."

He decided, that for the moment listening to the exorcist was rather fine idea. Breathing was good; breathing was making the world around less green and was making the black spots go away. Harry liked breathing.

"I think I'm better now," he finally mumbled. Mostly because he was starting to feel a bit of awkward, with a stranger pretty much hugging him.

"Good," Suguro backed off. "Now, do tell what made you so worked up."

"I'm not really supposed to..." Harry gritted his teeth. "Look, there are a lot of laws against talking about magic to people who aren't. Because, you aren't magical, right?"

"Think so," Suguro shrugged, completely unmoved by sudden revelation that magic actually exist. "But we get the memo about the magical world and so on."

"And you just believed it?"

"Why not?" Suguro looked at him. "I saw enough of strange stuff to believe in any kind of shit, magic included. So just talk to me, okay? If anybody got something against it, I can deal with that after we get rid of this thing."

"I don't think it would be that easy…" Harry mumbled. But the possibility of actually talking to someone about Voldemort and what had happened in the end of the Triwizard Tournament, nightmares and everything else… it was more than just tempting. Besides, people needed to be warned, right? And since there was nothing at all in the newspapers or on the TV… it was his chance to do something. And if he was tiny little bit selfish about it…

So he did it. He broke the Statue of Secrecy, opened his mouth and started talking. It was actually quite difficult to describe everything he wanted to tell. No mention about actually telling stuff in some sort of an order; Harry found himself more than once jumping back and forth, because he suddenly remembered an important detail he skipped a few minutes before. Luckily, Suguro was good at listening and smart enough to make a lot of connections on his own. But there wasn't enough time to tell everything. Not even close. And most of this stuff sounded really ridiculous once said out loud. Harry was flustered with embarrassment.

"Don't sweat it," Suguro smirked. "Saw stranger things."

"Like what?" Harry huffed. He really, really wanted to disappear right now. Disappearing would be great. But his cloak was in the closed under the stairs, closed shut, with the rest of his stuff. So no turning invisible for him any time soon.

"Huh," the exorcist blinked. "It's hard to pinpoint the oddest thing… Sometimes your brain is trying to erase thing for the sake of sanity, I guess. But there was that chair, it stalked one guy for several months…"

"A chair?" Harry repeated. It sounded quite funny, but also like something a wizard could do to pull a prank on Muggles. On the other hand, if they dealt with it without magical help – because Suguro definitely was a Muggle, even if quite strange…

"It really was ridiculous," he grimaced. "Especially after we had to find a way to take it down from the ceiling."

There was a soft knock before the doors opened. Behind them Aunt Petunia stood, with a sour grimace on her face. Next to her he could see a man who looked like a gentleman straight out of English novels. He had nicely done hair and a mustache over a friendly smile and his eyes looked like he could use some sleep. He was also wearing similar attire as Suguro, but he actually managed to look like it was some sort of suit instead of military uniform.

The heavy silhouette of uncle Vernon was hovering over both of them. Dudley was probably nearby too. Harry grimaced. Since when his room turned into some sort of tourist attraction?

"Are you done with the interview?" the gentlemanly looking exorcist asked.

"So–so," Suguro tilted his head with slightly irritated facial expression. "It's more complicated than we believed. Still doable, through."

"It's never easy, isn't it?" he shook his head.

"No when you're stuck with me," Suguro grimaced. "Honestly, I'm getting all the odd cases your guys managed to find."

"Well," the other one merely shrugged. "You're from Japan. Everything is haunted in Japan."

Petunia was observing the whole exchange at a distance and it was getting more and more stupid. Honestly, did her husband turn stupid all of sudden? These two were bickering, not even taking the whole masquerade seriously. Even that boy seemed to understand it, considering the way he acted when Vernon announced the news. Surprisingly reasonable, especially for his kind.

"You ready?" the older exorcist asked gently.

"Yeah, I know more or less what to expect," the young man nodded. "Be on standby."

"Understood," he nodded. "You want me to react immediately or wait for command?"

"Command," was the immediately answer.

"Fine by me," the old exorcist shrugged.

"Is this supposed to work like that?" Petunia frowned, looking between them. The young one seemed to be boss here and that was just wrong. No kid that young should be experienced enough to give orders. But she warned Vernon enough times already. Besides, what could go wrong? There people were not magical freaks or anything like that. They just believed the oddest and most ridiculous things.

So she decided to just watch the whole ordeal.

The young man - Suguro, he was called - made Harry sit down with his back next to his bed, while he sat down on the floor a few feet away from him in a rather relaxed way. There was an odd looking rosary wrapped around his hand.

His face seemed to be completely blank, excluding a slight frown of his brow and he was reciting players - Petunia wasn't exactly sure where these lines were from - without a moment of doubt.

For first few minutes she was staring. At least she wasn't alone; Harry seemed to be gaping too. Then, it actually got pretty boring. Because all Suguro was doing was sitting there and reciting ancient stuff. In at least three languages. At least his English was surprisingly well for a foreigner.

"It's always looks like that?" Petunia asked quietly, eyeing the other exorcist.

"He's an Aria," the older exorcist said with a slight smile. He was standing in the doors not stiff, but not relaxed either

"Aria?"

"Fight the evil by reciting sacred verses. All kind, as you can hear. Not very dynamic, I must admit, needs a partner too if things get awry, but at the same time they're the safest to do the job around normal people."

"Normal?" she raised eyebrow. That was new. Usually, when dealing with the freaks they tended to act like she was the odd one in the room. Or handicapped in some gruesome way. It was beyond offensive, really.

"Normal," he repeated once again, nodding. "There's no need to kid ourselves or anybody else. Exorcist definitely are not normal."

"How so?"

"The only way to be able to do this is to be exposed to the darkest things," he smirked humorlessly. "Not many live through that, even less stay sane."

"What do you mean?"

"You got touched by the evil and you will not be the same anymore, no matter how hard you try. It's a slight possibility for the boy to get the side effects."

"Side effects?"

"We exorcist see the world as it really is. All the evil spirits, all the things that bring misery upon people... we are to see all of it."

"Sounds rather terrifying," she said, because she felt like it was needed to be said. Not that she actually believed the man, but the stuff he was saying… it was making her uneasy. Like something heavy was suddenly hanging in the air, making it hard to breathe.

"The line is set so much further for us..." he shook his head.

"But he's young. What could have made him this way?" Petunia decided to change the topic a little bit. That Suguro boy was rather interesting specimen in his very own odd way. Mrs. Dursley didn't remember her grandmother very well, but the image of the old woman in her mind was carrying a rosary around too. She usually showed up just to drag her and Lily to the church or just to made them recite players with her. She was spending a lot of time on murmuring player after player, but she wasn't sounding like Suguro at all. His voice wasn't shaking at all, there was no hesitation either. Considering just how many these things he remembered, not to mention using language that was not his own… it was actually getting quite impressive. And a tad sad, because he was wasting himself in such an odd way instead of doing something more important with his life.

"This is rather private thing to ask, Mrs. Dursley," the old exorcist told her with a frown.

Suddenly, the air filled with a thick, dark smoke, that took human-like shape. The figure floating in the air looked odd, unnatural and terrifying. There was no need for any sort of supernatural abilities at all to feel the darkness and evil seeping from it, turning blood into ice.

"The one to vanquish the dark lords... when seventh moth dies... none should live...!"

Petunia gasped and stepped back a few steps, instinctively recognizing the threat. She might not know what killed her sister, she might not know how the vicious villain looked like, but she was sure it was him, the one called the Dark Lord, the murderer, the reason why Harry was left in the basket by her doors in the first place.

Harry recognized him too, knowing the voice from his nightmares, suddenly turning reality into one of them.

The dark figure was getting more and more real with every passing second, turning light seeping through windows into darkness, imprisoning every single one of them in the room, without a way out.

The old exorcist suddenly was before Petunia, shielding her with his own body ready to... she didn't really know, what he was going to do. But his kind face turned into a blank mask, his eyes shining dangerously, without a touch of fear in them. Suddenly, he wasn't the kind man she was talking with a few moments ago.

Suguro was standing too - and when exactly he managed to stand up?- still reciting the holy verses with strong voice, his eyes opened and staring straight at the terrifying wraith, which reached towards him with skeleton like claws.

Petunia couldn't do a thing, same as Harry. There was no wand in close proximity to the boy. Suguro was on his own. And wasn't afraid at all, which was just crazy. With a gesture, he ordered the other exorcist to stay where he was. Like he didn't need help at all, while darkness was growing in front of him more and more, casting dark, unnatural shadows that seemed to reach towards anybody in the proximity.

She screamed, suddenly spotting a dark shapes crawling towards the entrance to the room, towards her. Petunia didn't know what it was or what it was able to do, but her instincts knew better and she was all too aware of Dudley standing right behind her.

The older exorcist saw it too. He made a few gestures and something suddenly rose to existence, between them and the dark creature. It looked almost like a complicated sewing pattern, created with spider web shining with its own light.

The shadow reached on their direction, skeleton-like hand with finger like claws.

The moment it touched the thin lines in the air, there was a crack and sudden flash of light. The creature suddenly backed off.

Petunia exhaled, realizing just now she was holding her breath. She definitely didn't feel safe. The thin spider web of light definitely didn't seem to be all that solid.

Suguro slightly raised his voice and the creature took attention to him, circling around like it was looking for a blind spot. It was still growing, filling the room like dark fire, circling around the young exorcist. It was clearly cutting him off.

At least it left Harry alone, concentrating on somebody that was more dangerous to it.

Suguro was moving slightly, keeping eyes on the monstrosity, his voice still loud and clear, almost like he was mocking the evil spirit.

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me..."

The wraith suddenly gripped his arm.

He was ready, knife already in his hand. Suguro grinned ferociously and cut his own palm, letting the blood seep out. He said something too, but Petunia was unable to catch the word, too much too horrified by the dark presence and the sole act of tearing oneself flesh to recognize anything else.

Suddenly, bright fire lit the room, seeping through nowhere, or maybe brought up here by the offering of the wound. Suguro ordered with a single gesture and the unnatural fire listened to him, wrapping itself around the dark figure binding it in chain-like structures, then setting it aflame. High-pitched shriek filled the air, loud enough to make the glass in the windows shake and creating spider webs of creaks.

Smell of amber and burned sand filled the air.

The unnatural fire died as suddenly as it appeared. There was no trace of it in the suddenly dark room whatsoever, like there was no flames at all. Even air seemed to be cool. Only for a mere second, Petunia managed to caught oddly bright light in exorcist's eyes, but that could be just an illusion. Eyes definitely weren't shining with they own light, magic or not.

"What...was that?" Petunia breathed weakly.

"The ace in the sleeve," the old exorcist said in gloomy voice. "Most of the Aria need a support during the exorcism because while reciting the sacred texts they are completely vulnerable."

"But this is not the case with him," she said slowly.

"It's not. You found yourself quite in luck, Mrs. Dursley. His whole clan possesses…a certain affinity towards fire, but the head of the temple is on the level of his own."

"Head of the temple?"

"Yeah, he's the next most holy priest… or something like that. As I said, it was quite lucky. The wraith was quite strong and I'm afraid somebody else would leave a lot more mess than a broken window."

Well, Petunia found herself thinking. The floor looked like it never saw any fire at all and the rest of the room was just fine too. She could deal with the broken glass.

"That was interesting," the young exorcist said, his voice calm and steady, like there was no horrific wraith in the room mere moment ago.

"Interesting?" Petunia repeated weakly.

"Not exactly what I would expect, but not in the league with the things I had to deal with in the past," he shrugged. "Anyhow, I believe we should talk a bit more. The spirit was doing a more than just screwing around with the kid."

"W–what do you mean?" Harry managed to say. His voice was weak and he looked like he was close to fainting; really pale, ashen almost with eyes wide open and irises big enough to make them seem black.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Hi there! I'm sorry it took so long to upload this chapter, but well. It is summer and my computer is not taking the high temperatures well. It's quite difficult to write when you need to turn your working device off every now and then - and I'm not native, so it takes even longer.  
There's also the thing about how long this chapter happened to be. I have stuff planned for every chapter and they are just growing a bit bigger than planned. I don't really want to cut them in half, just to have more stuff to update.

Right now the chapter is not proofread-ed, later on I'm going to switch it with the prettier version. Didn't want to make you wait even longer.

**Chapter 3**  
**Dealing with the demons**

Vernon Dursley didn't know what to expect from the exorcists, but that definitely wasn't it. Whatever the kid did there it looked more like job of these freaks his nephew was hanging out with. On the other hand, Vernon knew that throwing out of the house somebody who could set things on fire by pure power of will wasn't the best idea.

Petunia shared his sentiment, considering how pale she looked.

"I..." she said, her voice slightly breaking. "I'm going to make tea."

"Yes!" he agreed quickly. "Tea! Tea is wonderful!"

They both hurried downstairs, grabbing Dudley on the way and dragging him away too, because the more distance between them and the weirdness, the better.

Suguro raised eyebrows.

"Brits," the other exorcist snorted quietly.

"You are one too, Joseph."

"Doesn't mean It will stop amusing me any time soon," the man grinned. "You freaked them out a little, you know."

"W-what was that?" Harry managed to wheeze through his teeth. And not bite his tongue off while doing so, which was rather impressing, considering how much they were clattering. He saw many things during his short time in magical world, many terrifying things, including Voldemort himself and Dementor who was about to suck his soul out, but this… this was something entirely else.

"I just exorcised an evil spirit?" Suguro tilted his head, like there was nothing wrong about the situation at all.

"By setting it on fire?" Harry shook his head. "I was sure it would look more like reciting prayers all day or waving around something that smells funny..."

He blinked, then blushed. Damn, he was nervous wreck and babbling really stupid. Or at least this was how Harry felt.

"Uh... sorry?" he murmured. "No offense, I just..."

"Saw that on TV?" Joseph helpfully added.

"Uh, yeah!" Harry agreed. "Something like that. But still! You set Voldemort on fire!"

"...um, yes. That wasn't planned," Suguro grimaced slightly. "Usually this sort of spirits is not that, uh..."

He paused an eyed the other exorcist. His expression was odd mix of annoyance and loss.

"Touchy-feely?" the older man proposed with a smirk.

"Stop joking around!" Suguro growled.

"In need for a hug?"

"That's not the word either."

"You're just picky."

"Are you guys even serious?" Harry groaned. All that bickering was definitely completely out of place. Shouldn't they act more professional or at least act like it wasn't just a childplay.

"Right now not really," the older man admitted with a smile and a shrug.

Suguro huffed at him with irritation, crossing his arms. The other exorcist completely ignored him and started explaining further.

"Anyhow, the plan was to do the usual, boring, recite until it drop dead stuff," he said. "Or shot it."

"You can exorcise evil ghost by shooting them?" Harry's eyes widened. "How that even works?"

"Well, you pull the trigger..."

"But wouldn't the bullet just go through the ghost like he's made of air?" Because well, ghosts were still ghosts. Things were just going through them, Harry remembered Moaning Myrtle and her bad mood triggered by that sort of happening rather well. How exactly were they supposed to feel the bullet then?

"It all depends," Joseph shrugged. "Different things can be put down by different types of ammunition. There is surprisingly great amount of memory work. It's easier for knight, they just smack things until they drop."

"Okay," Harry said slowly. He still didn't understand a thing, but maybe they just found a way to make ammunition from ectoplasm or something like that. It worked in the movies, so why not in the real life too? "But where the fire comes in?"

"He just tapped it."

"Excuse me?"

"Tapped. Like in a card game. To beat one monster you have to bring your own. Stronger too, obviously."

That was making sense, Harry decided. Ask bigger monster to smash smaller one over the head. Pretty simple, but still, one thing about using dark creatures in exorcism was odd.

"Aren't you supposed to fight demons?"

"There's just a problem with ordination," Suguro shrugged. "Honestly, the man who put the system in place was an idiot."

"Yeah, sorta. He just smashed everything together and called it a day," Joseph sighed with a small smile.

"So, there are good demons, or something?"

"It's way more complicated than that," Suguro groaned. "But for now we might stick to that. Familiars counts as good demons. Just don't tell anybody I actually said that."

Harry nodded slowly.

"I think your family had enough time to get over it, don't you?" Joseph smiled towards him.

"I think it's going to take them years to get over it," he grimaced. "They still are in the process with getting over me being magical, so uh…"

"I'm sure we can work something out," he said optimistically.

Yeah, Harry thought. A black eye, for an example.  
He looked around the room, not sure what he was expecting to see. Still no traces of any kind of fire whatsoever. Only the cracked window was a proof that something actually happened in here. That, and…

"Your hand," Harry licked his lips, trying not to stare too much. Gaping at other people's hands was weird, but he couldn't exactly help it as his brain decided to recall the whole situation, focusing precisely on the moment when knife's edge pierced skin.

"It's just a gash, kid," Suguro shrugged. "Relax."

"But–" he tried to protest, but stopped himself. That was the stupid question and he could guess the answer on his own rather well. But that brought another mystery. "Why had you do that? I don't know anything, but using blood still seems…"

"Excessive?"

"Yeah," he nodded. Even in magical world people usually were not using things like that, unless they were right in the middle of some very dark rituals.

"It's because I used fire spirit's help, as Joseph said," Suguro explained. "Some demons don't like to act like familiars and prefer to stick more to the guardian spirit tradition. You usually have to pay them in some way for the help, and blood is…"

He stopped, unsure what word to use.

"Always on hand?" Joseph smirked.

"Something like that," Ryuji grimaced slightly at the joke, because it was another bunch of words he wasn't really looking for. But it was close enough. "Anyhow, it's more like a cat scratch anyway. All I needed was a few drops, so I didn't try to chop my hand off or anything."

xxx

"What are we going to do, Vernon?" Petunia whispered to her husband when they reached the kitchen.

"Why are you asking me?" He wheezed back, nervously looking at the doors from time to time, like he was expecting something spooky to jump any minute.

"You were the one who asked weird people to come!" Petunia grunted, filling the teapot with water and setting it on stove with loud clang. She exhaled loudly through her nose, staring at it, like it would help water to boil sooner than usually.

"How could I know that it would turn this way?" Vernon grunted. "All I wanted was to exorcise the weird out of the brat, not this!"

"This somewhat counts as the weird," Petunia pointed out.

"You know what I meant!"

"And I told you was impossible even before they actually started doing... whatever it was," she hissed through her teeth, collecting tea service from the cabinet and then arranging it neatly. "It's like trying to exorcise a mustache from a man. You just can't do that!"

"Actually..." Dudley suddenly cut in. "I saw on the TV once, that there are pills for that..."

"Dudley, hush!"

"But mom!" he protested.

"Don't argue with your mother, young man!"

"I'm not arguing...!" he protested. "Besides... that was sort of cool!"

"Dudley, no!" They both gasped, not even sure if he was talking about the pills from TV or the whatever happened upstairs. They weren't even sure which one was the better of two evils in this equation.

"But it was! Like in the movies, or something!" he continued, flushing slightly from excitement. Well, at least they now knew what he was talking about.

"Yes, almost like magic," Vernon rolled his eyes.

"That wasn't magic," Petunia stated. "I know how it's looks like and it wasn't magic."

"Well, so Harry can't set stuff on fire," Dudley shrugged.

"And thank Heavens for that!" They both screamed at the same time. Their son blinked, then took the step to the side, then another one, making a little bit of distance between himself and them.

"So," he asked carefully. "What now? Are you going to throw them out, or something?"

"They just set that thing on fire and I doubt they have the same rules about using weird stuff around normal people as the freaks," Petunia murmured, eyeing her husband carefully. "Otherwise they wouldn't work like that, right? Visiting honest people and doing… things."

Vernon understood the point she was making very good. If there was no rules against doing something, then if angered, some oddballs might decide to prove a point in a very uncivilized way and he had literally nothing to prevent weird people from hurting his family.

"We are going to sit down and listen whatever they want to say," Vernon said out loud, trying very hard to not sound nervous. "We are going to politely nod and then we are going to forget about this whole thing."

"I told you it was a bad idea," Petunia sighed deeply and shook her head. Then she proceed to moving the tea set and then the kettle with hot tea to the dining room, putting down everything with great care, like the fate of the world depended on the spoons lying down in perfect straight line.

"What was that thing anyway?" Vernon asked, when she made second turn for more cups.

She almost sounded like she was bored when she answered him. "The Dark Lord, I think."

"Isn't he supposed to be dead?"

"He was," Petunia grunted. "But apparently, he's not."

"Were the freaks lying then? In that letter, I mean?"

"I don't think so..." Petunia shook her head. "I just can't wrap my mind around it."

"You're not the only one, Pet."

"But why the freaks let Harry just run around with that ultimate terrorist of theirs?" Dudley asked. "Couldn't they do the thing?"

"I don't think they even knew about it."

Dudley frowned, thinking for a moment, before he stated the obvious."That's weird."

"We're talking freaks here, son. Of course it's weird."

It didn't took long for Harry and the two exorcists to join them downstairs. At least the brat had the decency to look as nervous and the rest of the family.

"For what I understand," Suguro started when they all settled down by the table, gesturing slightly, white piece of band-aid on his palm catching eye and proving that whatever happened upstairs, really took place. "The being wasn't only parasiting on the boy here," he waved at Harry. "But was subtly changing the whole family."

"What do you mean, changing?" Vernon demanded.

"The usual victims of spirits similar to your problem are very fond of depressed, isolated people. They also tend to bring to surface the ugliest feeling and make them grow stronger. They also tend to..." he stopped for a moment, looking for the right expression, then just shrugged. " Invite friends."

"You mean, there is more than one?"

"No, which would be surprising if not for the rather creative wards around the house."

Petunia brow furrowed. "The man who left Harry here wrote something about the blood wards," she said quietly. "They were supposed to keep the evil people away."

"And fine job they did!" Vernon grunted.

"Actually, they seems to work just fine," Suguro said. "I managed to caught just a glimpse, but I'm pretty sure they're active and working. The problem is, while they were not letting anything in, they were also keeping everything inside too, isolating you even further. Double edged sword, of sorts."

"I doubt they ever knew there was possibility for these wards to work this way," Joseph said, putting down his cup. "Most of the people, even magical people, are oblivious to this sort of things and supernatural beings tend to ignore normal humans. That's why all the clashes are spectacularly bad; nobody knows what is going on."

"Then how are you going to deal with it?" Petunia blinked, feeling worried again. "And how we are going to live with it?"

Because she really hated to put her Duddykins in any sort of danger. If there really was something in the house, something similar to that horrifying wraith of a man who killed her sister…!

"I would like you to be in contact for at least a few months," Suguro stated. "Malevolent spirits tend to be stubborn. And the sudden power vacuum looks like an invitation for anything interested."

"Are you telling that it could return and take over the boy again?" Vernon groaned.

"Not only to him," the old man shook his head. "I'm afraid, they tend to attack people connected by blood. Or leave enough miasma traces for other beings to take interest."

Petunia didn't understood what that miasma thing was or how it worked, but she could guess well enough that they were still in danger.

"How… how it could end for us if Vernon wouldn't ask for help?" she asked. Grasping hard on the material of her skirt under the table, so nobody was able to see how trembling her fist was or how white her knuckles turned.

The exorcists exchanged looks and it was really all she needed to know, it was telling so much that hearing the answer was unnecessary.

"Well," the older man started carefully, his eyes wandering from one member of the Dursley family to another while he was talking. "It all depends on what kind of spirit decided to invite itself to the household. Cases of decreasing energy of members of the household are rather usual, sometimes to the point of putting the whole family in coma."

"And this isn't the word case scenario, isn't it?" Vernon asked, grimacing.

"No, this is really mild," Suguro admitted bluntly. "That's why I want to monitor your family, Mr. Dursley. I have more experience with this sort of thing and know what to look for."

He stopped for a moment, as if he was thinking which words to use to explain things further. Instead his mouth curled a bit and his fingers travelled along the white line of band-aid.

"And I'm sorry about the window."

xxx

It was almost half of a year since Suguro got stuck in England because of reasons nobody wanted to talk about but everybody knew politics was somewhat involved.

He didn't really mind living that far away from home. And besides, he was doing exactly the thing somebody was trying to prevent him from doing.

Naturally it all started with Rin, because everything in this world had to do something with the idiot.

First, he admitted to have quite a big problem and a real-deal guillotine hanging over his head only two months before theoretical exams for the title - either he passes them or he end up dead and the fact he managed to beat the crap out of Illuminati and stand up to Lucifer himself wasn't meaning a thing. At least Mephisto managed to talk people into counting it as a passed practical part of the exam.

Suguro ended up pretty much moving into the dorm where Okumura brothers were living and, by joining forces with Neko and Izumo, started a painful and frustrating process of forcing the knowledge into thick skull of half-demon.

After Rin managed to do the impossible and actually passed the real mess started with everybody fighting with everybody else and somehow MyouDha managed to not only stay afloat but actually rise in the ranks. They also managed to assimilate two small families, thanks to what Suguro could throw his weight rather effective.

The sudden grow in power wasn't welcomed everywhere and somebody had to recognize Suguro as dangerous enough to move him away from the chessboard before he would become too important.

And so, Suguro ended up in England and proceed to quickly building up his reputation and trying to meet as many people as possible.

Now it was getting even more interesting, because magic.

Suguro dropped into chair at the kitchen table with heavy sigh.

"Was all that showing off really needed?" Joseph asked, taking a seat nearby.

Living here was not all that different from living in the True Cross Academy dorms. Most of the local exorcist were living in single building. Similar cells were located all over the England, making moving people around much easier. As far as Suguro knew, the Doors around here were used only for emergencies, so the path wouldn't be in lockdown if something happen.

This particular cell was located in old, one store high building with elegant facade and truly annoying mess when it came to heating. It was more not working at all than working properly and when for some reason it was actually doing its job, it wasn't the time.

But they all were living here rather temporary and they were returning to the cell just to sleep for awhile and then go back to whatever they were actually working on.

Joseph was rather special snowflake; for years he was walking into situations others were not even trying to poke with a stick and while he wasn't the most talented person in the field, he had patience of a saint. He also instantly took Suguro under his wing, finding time–lagged, dumbstucked by sudden change of scenery and language youngster as something hilarious. Especially after Ryuji opened his mouth and tried to communicate in English for the first time.

"No," Suguro admitted. "I didn't expect it to break through my barrier."

"You should be more careful," Joseph said, standing up and heading straight for the pot, to make some tea. Bad sign. When someone like him get worked up on something that meant you screwed something really badly.

"I know!" Suguro moaned. "I'm getting too used to all this and I know I should keep my head in the game, but..."

"What you need is to take a few days off," Joseph pointed out. "I know what you are trying to do, but overdoing it wouldn't lead to anything good."

"Easy for you to say."

"Pointing out that I'm not the most ambitious of people is not a very good thing either."

"Right. Sorry," he mumbled, turning away.

"I'm not angry at you for alluding to my weak points," Joseph huffed, venturing through the fridge to stole something edible from somebody. "I'm angry because for all your smarts, you're still not thinking! You can't just let things grab you and hope for the best. There will be that one time when it will fail and you will be done."

Suguro grit his teeth. It was not the first time he heard that. Apparently, he made a full circle and was exactly where he started. He felt frustrated with himself, because all that effort he put into breaking this bad habit – it was all for nothing.

"You just need a rest," the older exorcist patted him on the shoulder blade; because of the height difference reaching all the way towards his shoulder would be a bit too much. "Give it a few days and you will be back with a fresh mind. No need to be down."

"I'm not good at doing nothing," Suguro admitted with a grimace.

"Well, you promised that kid to show up, why not turn it into a bigger project then?" Joseph shrugged. "You will be doing something and not risking your life for a change. You can even learn something new if you really need to."

"About that," Ryuji mumbled, eyeing the other man. "Did you know? About magic, I mean. Because I definitely wasn't expecting that to came out."

"I knew they exist," Joseph admitted. "Didn't tell you, because they are really twitchy about the topic and trigger happy too. Shoot fireworks first, ask questions later sort of people. Better to ignore their existence whenever that's possible, the life instantly gets far less messy."

"It might change pretty soon, through," Suguro murmured. "The kid told me quite a story about the dark Lord of theirs who recently came back to life. He might become an issue."

"Well, then you found yourself a mission already," Joseph snickered. "Have fun investigating that."

Were magical people really that bad? Right now Suguro had no idea, but sour mood of the other exorcist was telling stories of its own. He usually was very cheerful and tolerant. If somebody got on his nerves enough to made him spitting a bit of venom on the whole community…

This, Suguro decided, was going to be very interesting.  
He probably should run.

xxx

A few days later, the younger exorcist showed up, exactly as promised. In civilian clothing with was good and bad at the same time. Good, because these dark cloaks were rather odd in such warm weather and people would talk and bad, because he was sticking out like a sore thumb anyway.

"Well," Vernon grunted awkwardly, trying to look everywhere but the young exorcist. "It's better, I think. And we took down the bars from the windows."

Suguro blinked. "You had bars in your windows?"

"You didn't...?!" Vernon gasped, then his face turned bright red. "I think this is too late to act like I never said that, right?"

"Kinda?"

Vernon Dursley hoped that after the exorcism was done, he would feel better, like that man from work, who was so in awe.

Not that Vernon actually believed in this sort of things, he was standing firmly on the ground, but still, he knew all that psychological mumbo-jumbo was worth something. It was showing up again and again in management meeting in his firm, where some people from schools were babbling about how making people feel better about themselves was making them working better, even if the method of choice to rinse their morale was plain dumb.

But Vernon wasn't feeling better at all. If anything, his feelings got much, much worse.

For the two whole days he was walking around with the feeling of uneasiness, not even able to tell what was the cause of this anxiety. The only thing he know it was the feeling of wrongness was strong enough to keep him up at night, stirring in the bed frantically and trying not to follow the impulse to get up and just run as fast as possible, far, far away and in his pajamas.

In the evening of the second day he gave up on sorting this out by himself and started asking brat the questions; because he spend some time alone with both of the exorcists, so maybe he had an answer to this problem.

He hadn't, of course, but now Vernon had at least clues.

They told him that living with the bug-wraith on his forehead for years could have an impact on his biochemistry, wrecking havoc on hormonal levels and all the other things.

That actually made some sense; it was similar to nicotine addict deciding to drop the cigarettes - all the machinery inside the body was so used to that substance, that without it, everything was working just wrong.

Were they reacting in similar way? Were their bodies so used to this dark weird thing being nearby so much, they were going through withdrawal symptoms?

The answer came suddenly, from completely unexpected source.

Because the glass in Harry's room was broken, he had actually call some people to do the work and put a new one in the window frame. It was all very irritating and both Vernon and Petunia were too tired to really deal with people, but there wasn't much choice. This had to be done before it starts raining again, otherwise the whole life would go to hell.

Luckily, the two guys who showed up did their job quickly and professionally. But one of them said something, that freeze blood in Vernon veins for some unexplained reason.

"Oh," the man said, entering the room that was once Dudley's second bedroom. It was still pretty empty, just a bed and that broken wardrobe, a desk and a bunch of knick-knacks. " Somebody is moving in? Pretty bare for now on, huh?" he probably noticed Vernon's reaction, so he added quickly. "Don't worry, after a few days this place will surely fill up with all kind of things!"

"Yes," Vernon nodded, trying to not turn stiff as stone. "My nephew just moved in, it was quite unexpected and we had to clean up this room in hurry. It was... a store room, you see."

"I understand," the man grinned cheerfully. "I don't really like to throw stuff away too and after awhile the garage is just not enough to keep everything, right?"

He wasn't exactly sure why he was lying or why he laughed with that irritating guy, trying to not sound nervously, while the feel of wrongness was growing inside him.

Later that day, he sat down in his and Petunia's bedroom and turned on the computer, creating a new file with simple table with two columns. Putting things in order was always making thinking easier while he bumped into some sort of challenge at work, so it should work elsewhere just fine.

The one side was titled 'weird' while the other was proudly stating 'normal'.

Vernon clicked his tongue, staring at it for awhile, then typed his nephew name, just under the first word. It didn't seems to be working, he decided after another minute of gaping at the computer screen. He deleted the word, then decided to take a different approach and start with the room.

Harry was living in the spare bedroom like just any other kid and that was just fine and perfectly normal. Harry was living in the room that looked like it was a storage just until yesterday and he was living there for years, which seems to be somewhat wrong. And before that, he was living in the cupboard under the stairs. Vernon frowned, then wrote down the sentence. If he found that statement in a report, a book or even a movie, he would call it ridiculous. Knowing that he actually used to keep a kid in the cupboard was...a bit disturbing, no matter all that freakishness.

Vernon groaned, but decided to leave the cupboard in the weird section. Now, when he was on a trail, the work got easier but at the same time he really didn't want to see what he was typing.

Harry was cooking, harry was cleaning, Harry was doing gardening and wearing Dudley's clothes. Everything seemed to somehow be about Harry and everything was just wrong.

The exorcist who set the evil weirdo on fire said that the weirdo could made them do nasty stuff. Was this it then? Was he feeling so uneasy, because without monster hovering over the household he was finally able to feel that something was not right?

Vernon shook his head. Magic was weird and dangerous, so keeping freaks away from normal people was making sense, right?

Anyhow, now he was forced to make some changes. People saw the state of the room, not only the other group of weirdoes but the normal, honest to god workers too. People do talk and Vernon would really hate them to talk bad about him. He had a reputation after all. Till this day, the magical thingies freaks set up around the Privet Drive were keeping people from noticing much, but Vernon didn't feel like resisting this too much. It's not like they really cared about him or his reputation.

The next day, he handed the brat a hundred and told him to go and purchase some decent clothes. And decided that the bookcase was just taking too much room in the dining room anyway, so it could go to the smallest bedroom, along with the trunk and all the other stuff that belonged to kid and was taking space in perfectly good cupboard.

"Barriers...!" Suguro groaned, massaging his temples. "Apparently, they make people ignore certain things."

"But why you didn't notice this before?" Vernon blunted out.

"I might be an exorcist, but that doesn't mean I can't be influenced."

"Isn't this making things more difficult?"

The exorcist shrugged. "I do know to expect something. I know what I wrote myself for, after all. And it's not like these things are malicious anyway."

"They could be," Vernon murmured. Then he bit his tongue, but it was already too late, the words were already out in the open.

"Point," luckily, the exorcist didn't took is as something offensive. "I can set up some sort of defense against the evil spirits if you like. The most effective way would be to just do it outside, but I doubt you want somebody wandering around out in the open and talking funny."

"It is going to look like a priest blessing the house, or something?"

Suguro blinked, then he gave a small, crooked smile. "Actually it would be exactly like that."

Vernon stared for a moment and then stared some more.

"You are a priest?" because, honestly, with how he looked like…! Not to mention, he was a bit too young to be some sort of religious figure.

"I am," he just said.

There was, of course, some sort of story behind that, but Suguro decided not to share this. Vernon was completely fine with it, because he still wasn't sure how he himself felt about the whole deal. At least the exorcist was bind by some sort of secrecy, so he could be a bit less worried about people knowing.

The – whatever he was doing – took a few hours and was rather underwhelming. Just standing in the room, reciting prayers out loud, with fingers bend in odd way and strange rosary dangling between them. The most admirable thing about the whole deal was the fact that young exorcist didn't die out of boredom.

He finished at the smallest bedroom and then proceed to ask Harry all sort of questions about how he was feeling. Vernon after a moment of consideration decided let them be. Not that anything was going to happen. All the scary stuff was already done. At least he hoped so.

Harry wasn't sure what to think about the whole situation either. On one hand, talking magic with somebody completely Muggle felt weird – the magical world probably rubbed on him with this one – on the other, he saw how Suguro dealt with the Voldemort–like wraith.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, after they were done with all that difficult stuff about changes in emotions and fear.

"Doing what?"

"You know," Harry made a wide gesture with his hand. "This. You weren't ever scared when you fought off Voldemort."

"Saw way more terrifying things than him," Suguro shrugged. "And I'm doing it, because I can."

"That's a stupid reason."

"But the only one you're going to get," he huffed. "It's not like you were not in similar situation before."

Harry blinked.

"That brat you saved? You told me about it."

"But that was different!" Harry protested. "If I didn't do anything, she would have died!"

"Probably," Suguro agreed. "But this is exactly the same for me. Either I do my job, or people are going to die."

"At least you got to choose," he grunted, looking away.

The exorcist hummed quietly, his brow furrowed. "You know, I'm not exactly sure about that. I was shielded in some way, but eventually I would end up in the same place I'm right now. It would just take a little bit longer."

They talked a bit more, but there wasn't anything as meaningful as that. Harry spend rest of the evening thinking, how his life would go, if there was a choice for him to make. Would he just ignore everything, that was going on, or go and do the right thing anyway?

It was called a right thing for a reason, after all.

xxx

The exorcist showed up again after three days.

By all means, Suguro should be the last person Vernon Dursley would felt comfortable talking to.

Foreigner who was still butchering English from time to time, very young but at the same time a few years too old to treat him like a brat. He looked like a thug too, especially without his uniform. No mention, he was living in even more freakish way than his nephew, in a world, where monsters really were crawling from under the beds and dead were walking.

But for some strange reason, talking to him didn't seem wrong. Or he just needed to let all of it go, before the words would burst out of his mouth when somebody else, somebody not weird would be around.

"You see, it all was making perfect sense!" Vernon said, feeling a little bit like he was just rambling at this point. "But a few days ago I've written it all down, the things I was doing and why, and then it just... stopped. Making sense, I mean. Or even being normal!"

Because keeping little brat in cupboard, hoping that all the odd things about him will perish from one day to another was definitely not normal. Right now, Vernon wasn't even sure how exactly it seemed logical at all.

"You guys told us it was because of that...whatever it was, but I don't think we can just dump all the off things on that and call it a day."

They just wanted to be normal back then and it didn't change much. Vernon still preferred his mundane life from all that craziness around. But by trying to force the world act the way they liked, they jumped straight into doing things that definitely counted as, well, crazy.

"I won't tell you it wasn't you," Suguro said with a deep sigh. "Or it was all the barrier and dark spirit fault. The beginning lies elsewhere and we both know it."

That was fair, Vernon thought. He should be offended, furious even, but this was just dry statement, nothing else. They never really wanted another child, Dudley was just enough. And the way magical people just dropped the boy on them was really angering.

It seemed to be somewhat logical too. The emotions, closed in bubble that wasn't letting anything go through, the emotions probably started to just acting like geometric sequence growing worse and worse until they finally turned into some wicked parody of normalcy.

"But shouldn't we all be afraid? Of things that we can't control?"

"Fear is natural. But denying that shit hit the fan would not make the room any less stinky," Suguro deadpanned.

"Way to break the mood," Vernon grimaced, trying very hard to get rid of that particular mental image and failing.

He received a shrug for an answer. "Dumb jokes always make things easier to accept."

Honestly, Vernon had no idea what his opinion about the exorcist was. On one hand he was one of the weird people, no mention that he gave a distain suggestion about seriously messing things up if he meets resistance. But then, he was not overusing his power at all. And he was listening, while not judging. Vernon wasn't sure if it was because of the whole being a priest business or because Suguro just didn't really cared about anything that took place at Privet Drive.

Mr. Dursley wasn't the only one who couldn't make his mind; Harry had exactly the same problem. Suguro could be downright terrifying at times.

Besides, he had no idea what else was there to do, after the wraith of Voldemort was dealt with. Everything was supposed to be fine, the adventure over before it even began. But the exorcist seemed to not share the sentiment, considering the fact they were meeting again.

"Well, uh..." Harry suddenly felt awkward. "That's for showing up?"

"Not a problem. I was the one who offered in the first place, dumbass," the exorcist snorted. Or should Harry said, Suguro? Since the other boy was out of his uniform, wearing a tank-top and jeans cut under the knees, he looked more or less normal. Punkish-style and somewhat oriental because of his origin, but still like any other ordinary guy. Was he off the clock then?

"So," he said. "How's going?"

"Uh," Harry bit his lip. "Fine, I guess?"

"You guess," Suguro raised eyebrows.

"Well, okay, I have no more nightmares," he said, grimacing slightly. Less than usual, at least and he wasn't dreaming about things he didn't saw anymore. That didn't erased the Triwizard Tournament from his mind, but he actually managed to sleep through whole night once.

Suguro was waiting.

Harry grimaced, but the exorcist wasn't going anywhere, at least not until he hear everything he wanted from him, so all Harry could do at the moment was to raise white flag and just cooperate. "Well, at least these about...him. I still dream about the past, though."

"That's not really surprising, you know. The brain is trying to cope, make sense out of the informations and so on."

"I suppose," Harry mumbled. "But that's definitely not the best thing in my life. I mean, if I could've do anything to..."

"Are you trying to say that his death was your fault?" he picked up instantly, his sharp eyes staring right at Harry, making him feel uneasy.

"Well, I was the one, who..." he babbled nervously.

"Cut the crap and stop being stupid," Suguro huffed with irritation. "Was there a way for you to know that it was a trap?"

"Well, no, but..."

"No buts. Others were responsible for keeping the whole thing safe and they failed miserably at it. You were not supposed to join the mess in the first place."

"Don't expect logic from wizarding world," Harry sighed.

"I have to agree on that one," Suguro rolled his eyes. "But this doesn't change the point. You never pulled the trigger nor you had the chance or skills to do anything."

"But if not me, then who? I mean, everybody is fixated on me, even, you know, Him. I can at least try to use all that stupid fame to do something!"

Ryuji smiled. "I can understand that. But what exactly are you going to do?"

Harry blinked.

"I mean, to do something, you have to actually plan, right?"

"I was always just rolling with it, I guess?" Harry scratched his head. "The disaster just happened right in front of me anyway, so…"

"But right now everything seems to be rather still, isn't it?" the exorcist pointed out and Harry had to agree. He couldn't find sign of Voldemorts activity anywhere and the wizarding world was even quieter than usual.

"So," Ryuji continued, satisfied with his silence. "Why not use all that free time?"

"Like what?" he grunted. "He's not only more powerful than me and has more experience, but he's like The Dark Lord around here! What possibly I could do?"

"This is not the right attitude, you know," Suguro huffed, crossing his arms. "While it's good you don't underestimate your enemy, there's no reason to not do something unexpected."

"Unexpected?"

"The options are all around you, kid. Read more about that magic of yours, so you would have at least an idea what's going on. Try to learn something about self–defense. Go learn how to make explosives and blow up his hideout. Or better blow up something else and frame him, so other people would join the fight!"

"Explosives?" Harry blinked. "Like how I'm going to learn that?"

"Go ask your cousin, I'm sure he can tell you all about it," Suguro grinned.

"Are you even treating this whole thing serious?"

"Yes, I am," Ryuji nodded. "I just don't see much sense in curling in the corner or looking for the cover when shit hits the fan. Since you can't deny that there is something wrong out there, then you at least can try to do something. This will make you feel better."

Harry hummed. It's not like learning a little bit of everything would help him against somebody as powerful as Voldemort anyway. Before he managed to get away only because he was insanely lucky, but luck had to run out sometime, right? Then he would be left with absolutely nothing to fend for himself.

On the other hand, he had to admit, when Professor Lupin was teaching DADA, he was really feeling good with himself, especially after he managed to create his Patronus. So, even if he only managed to teach himself a very little until the next meeting with the Dark Lord – because they would definitely meet again – it would be still something up his sleeve.

"By the way," his voice brought him out of his thoughts. "You feeling fine? I mean, besides the nightmares?"

Harry shrugged. "I'm no sunshine. At least I'm less... angry, I guess."

Suguro nodded. "Connection to spirits usually influence the mood of the carrier. Anything else?"

"Why are you asking?"

"Because as far as I understand, you were connected to this crap almost your whole life," Suguro explained in the tone, that sounded almost like male version of Hermione. Even the gesticulation was similar. "Human emotions are connected to biochemistry. Basically, your whole organism is so used to add stuff for the emotions inflicted by the spirit that it will still works like it was still stuck to your skull."

"And that means... what exactly?"

"That it could get messy. But hard to tell what kind of messy," Suguro shook his head. "I think over the time it should balance things out, but as you are now, it could get nasty. Like you're trying to drop smoking or some other addictives."

"Just what I need," Harry snickered.

"That's why I want you to stay in contact," Suguro sighed. "Because of all that secrecy you can't get the help usual way, so in worst case scenario I could contact you with a friend of mine. "

"I don't need a shrink, I'm not crazy!"

"Yes, you definitely aren't," Suguro nodded. "But that doesn't change the fact that you were coexisting with an evil spirit and you had a traumatic experience. Experiences, considering what you have told me about you early years."

"I managed to survive!"

"People are not supposed to just survive, you know," Suguro sat down next to him with a heavy sight. "Nor are they supposed to go on on their own. I know that accepting the help is a difficult shit..."

"It's not like I wasn't asking!" Harry shouted. "I tried to contact them, anybody, but they just didn't..."

He was shaking. Shaking, desperately trying not to cry and completely miserable to boot. Ashamed to, he really didn't want people to see him like that. But it was hard to not feel like that when the only answers he received from his friends were short and just telling him to hold on in there and that's everything was going to be fine. Nothing was.

"Hey," Suguro said, carefully placing his hand on Harry's shoulder. "I know it's not okay. But at the moment you are not alone, are you?"

"I just don't understand!"

"There is only a month until next school year," Suguro pointed out. "You can force them into explaining face to face."

"I shouldn't do that in the first place," Harry grunted.

"In the ideal world," Ryuji snickered, but not at him. More like at memory of sorts. "Look, I can't tell you what's going on in heads of your friends. But people are dumb and they tend to avoid situations they don't know how to deal with. It's like hoping the trouble would just go away if you ignore it long enough. Totally not working, but people are doing it anyway."

"You sound like you know what you are talking about," Harry hummed, eyeing him curiously.

Suguro grimaced. "Fell into that trap once," he admitted. "It was messy, but turned okay in the end."

"And how you dealt with it?"

"Screamed at each other for a bit, then we were too occupied by trying not to die," Suguro shrugged. "It was in the middle of really nasty situation, not even an assignment. We all were in school back then and shouldn't be even let close to that sort of things, but shit get messed up everywhere."

Harry blinked. Somehow, that wasn't what he expected to hear. He was waiting for something more… epic, he supposed. Big story about how talking to each other was important, how people were supposed to explain their opinions and how you were supposed to respect their opinion.

"Well, nice to know I was not the only one who got this sort of stuff at school," Harry smiled slightly.

"Were you expecting it?"

He blinked, surprised by the question. "Uh, no? I mean, I knew it was going to be different, because magic and all that, but fight with the Dark Lord definitely wasn't in the guidebook."

Being a national hero wasn't there either. He expected to be just another student, pretty normal and no different than anybody else.

"So here's the difference – I was," Suguro said. "Even before the semester began, I already knew what I was walking into."

That probably was nice, Harry decided. He didn't know if he would make same choice if he was given one. He wasn't going to abandon the magical world in need, but if there was an option to chose something more mundane, he would definitely be grabbing it instantly.

On the other hand, depending on somebody else to act, when people, especially his friends were in danger – that probably would be even more nerve wrecking. Ducking from the curses was definitely easier even if it was painful at times.

"What's done is done," Harry finally said, shrugging. "I can deal with it, so it's fine."

"Try to not do stuff on your own at least," the exorcist grunted. "I already promised to have an eye on you for awhile. If there's a problem or something you can just ask."

Harry nodded slowly. Help from someone who knew what he was doing would be definitely a good thing, Though, how could he keep in touch while at school? That would be rather troublesome for somebody not magical. And there was always the problem with timing – at least a day before receiving an answer, even if the situation was really difficult and no way to make it any faster.

"Obviously," Suguro continued. "I won't be able to always answers the calls, my job has somewhat odd hours, but you can send a text message. I'll call back when I'm free."

"That's... nice." Harry murmured, staring at the ground. "But why are you doing this?"

"Just because? "Suguro smirked. "It's not a pity, I assure you. More like curiosity."

"Curiosity?"

"The magical abilities are really strange concept for me. Not because they let you do the whatever shit you find fancy, but because the connection to the spiritual beings is still half-assed. More than for an usual human, but not strong enough to give you ability to actually see."

"I can see them, since the exorcism," Harry muttered.

"And this in the next reason, why I decided to stick around. It's not very usual occurrence and you can't exactly go and join the True Cross Order to learn how to live with all that," the exorcist sighed deeply. "How are you dealing with that, anyway?"

"Fine," he just shrugged. "Sometimes is hard to not start to gape at them and people are thinking I'm unwell in the head, but that's nothing new."

It was probably a bad thing to say and as far as Harry could tell, but it didn't seem to move his interlocutor all that much. But as far as he know, Suguro liked honesty and was very blunt himself.

"I can probably get my hand on books for you. At least I think I can. Then you would at least know what you are seeing."

"Can't I just borrow yours?" he asked, slightly confused. Hunting down books just for him seemed like overdoing things a bit. Especially since the exorcist was already giving subtle vibe of workaholic, he really didn't want to give him even more stuff to do.

"And you can read Japanese since when?" Suguro snickered.

Harry laughed, blushing slightly. "Right, sorry. That was dumb."

xxx

The man was wearing midnight blue, three-piece suit like a second skin. His face was covered with simple, white mask and he appeared completely out of nowhere at the afternoon of the first day of July.

"And who in the hell are you?" Suguro glared at the intruder, not sure how he was supposed to react. Joseph seemed to be completely fine with this person, whoever it was, but that doesn't mean Suguro was supposed to do the same.

People randomly showing up in the middle of the room usually were not trustworthy. Mephiso taught him this lesson well enough.

"Oh, I'm Septimus," he said with strong, Scottish accent. "Seven, if you prefer."

"That's not meaning anything," he grunted.

"It's fine," Joseph said in gentle voice. "I know Seven quite well. We were actually working together for a few years."

"So what's up with the mask?"

"I'm an Unspeakable," Seven said in a matter of fact voice. "Because of that, I cannot speak of my other life nor show my face."

"I still don't understand a thing," Suguro admitted with a shrug.

"Well, this is quite a long story," Seven said happily. "Since you already know about the magical world, we can skip that ridiculous part about proving magic to be real, yes?"

Suguro blinked. Finally, something that was making sense.

"You see, both of our worlds had some trouble recently in the past. We had a Dark Lord and his Death Eaters on the loose, while you had the Blue Night, am I right?"

He just nodded, letting him continue.

"Because of that, suddenly there was close to none well trained people on your side to fight demons and spirit and we also lost way to many people to keep things in order. Soon, both word started to mix with each other. A stray spirit there, wreaking havoc on poor, stupid wizards, or a stray Dark Lord supporter who bumped into you guys while running away from us. It was a complete mess."

"After we were done with trying to beat each other to a pulp, we found out that cooperation is actually the best way to go."

"Then why the kid had no idea how the Exorcists work?" Suguro pointed out.

"Because not many people knows about it, obviously!" Seven said, like it was elementary knowledge. "We Unspeakables are as independent from our government as you are. But we're unlucky enough to share building with our government. Foolish people, I tell you!"

"So you are lying to your own people?"

"They are too stupid to notice they can't do thing or two on their own. Saw more than once what's left after wizard trying to take down even a low level demon. Quite disgusting and spatters even on the ceiling."

Well, that was a little bit underwhelming, Ryuji decided. On the other hand he saw himself that magical people were not good when dealing with supernatural. On the other hand, they seemed to ignore things like being dead, so…

"On the other hand, we were not expecting their abilities to," Joseph admitted. "While the wiping memory trick was just irritating, the more battle oriented spells were more troublesome.

"Wiping memory?" Suguro asked, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. Imagining, that some random dude could pat him with a piece of wood and turn him into a vegetable was disturbing. Way more disturbing, than imagining what could happen on screwed up job; monsters were interested only in tearing people apart and that was easy to deal with. Shared sentiment, really. Manipulating brain on the other hand was just wrong.

"They're using it, so the normal people don't burn them on stakes," Joseph shrugged. "They are a bit... behind the times."

"But still, wiping memory, how's that a good idea at all?"

"Well, it comes with a note to not use it on Occluments and exorcists," Seven shrugged. "An organized mind is not only much more resistant but also capable to spot the modification almost instantly."

"I still don't like where this is heading," Suguro shrugged. Acting like modifying somebody's memories like it was nothing... apparently, the wizard society happily threw all their morality out of the window for the sake of comfortable life.

"It is going to be a mess after the non-magical discovers us," Seven agreed. "But the idiots are so used to threw spells around we can't do much."

"After?"

"Well, the technology is more and more advanced and it's quite hard to cheat on satellites anyway," the Unspeakable said in somewhat bored tone. "I think we have a decade or maybe two before everything is going to fall down."

He didn't seem to be particularly disturbed by this vision, like he didn't really cared for all the secrecy at all. Ironic, considering the fact he couldn't even tell them his real name.

"Anyhow, I wanted to meet with you, because of the boy you mentioned. Harry Potter."

"What about him?"

"Tell me about what you exorcised," Seven demanded, his voice all of sudden deadly serious.

"Harry called it Voldemort," Suguro said, carefully choosing his words. "It was almost like any other malevolent spirit, but it was lacking something."

"Lacking?"

"Like he was incomplete in some way," Suguro tilted his head, thinking. "Or like not everything of him was around."

"And Joseph told me it was hiding in the scar?"

"On the kid's forehead, yeah," Suguro nodded.

"Piece of soul, most curious..." Seven mumbled.

"You know something?"

"Oh, don't mind me!" Seven said quickly, his happy, sing-songy tone back and even more annoying."I'm just standing here, planning murder!"

"Ouch?" Joseph asked, raising slightly his eyebrows.

"Ouch indeed," Seven grunted. "Can you do me a favor and keep an eye on the brat? He's somewhat important, you see, symbol of hope and golden mutton of sorts, you know."

"Gathered that much," Suguro shrugged. "And I promised to be in contact already anyway. Something I should expect?"

"Idiots with magical sticks," Seven wandered across the room with dance in his steps. "And now I'm sorry, but I have to attend to important matters!"

He bowed deeply and then just disappeared with a quiet pop.

"That was... weird," Suguro said after a moment of silence.

"You get used to it."

"Well now at least I know where your lack of temper came from."

"Compared to them, working with you is gloriously boring," Joseph grinned widely. "No offense, of course."

Suguro just shrugged, trying to piece together all the new information he received with things he already knew. The image was turning to be more and more disturbing, especially around Harry. The brat was just a brat, nothing less, nothing more. Yet, the magical world was treating him like some sort of special snowflake, at the same time refusing to give the kid tools that would at least give him a chance. That was just plain unfair.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** Hello again! I hoped that this chapter would not turn into another monster, but it's over 9k again. The dumb DB joke is strong in me, it seems. This is also yet another chapter without proofreading - I'm doing as much as I can, but I'm sooner going to memorize the whole thing than spot every single mistake. So, uh - somebody want to help a bit?

**Chapter 4**  
**Two worlds**

Since he ended up in England as so called specialist for the unusual cases, Suguro really shouldn't be surprised when he found orders and the pretty thick file with all the Annexes that went with this particular case.

He expected people to dumb all troublesome stuff on him, but this… was rather underwhelming.

"So..." Suguro raised his eyebrows, looking at the files, then back at Joseph. "Dead bodies are running from the cemetery again."

"Fourth time this month," the older exorcist grimaced. "It's not even funny anymore."

"What's up with this graveyard anyway?"

"Haven't the slightest," Joseph shook his head. "Nothing spectacularly malicious. Fifty years ago a whole family dropped dead, but there were times when carbon monoxide leaks were a pretty usual stuff, so…"

"Maybe somebody is having his fun then?" Suguro chewed on his thumb, thinking. "Through somebody would be able to spot that obsessive-compulsive necromancer by now..."

"And that's exactly the reason why this time they want you to check this out," the older exorcist shrugged. "Maybe you bumped into something similar that's completely foreign to us."

Suguro hummed under his nose. Like somebody expected everything unusual to be of Japanese origins. Even now, he could tell this thing had nothing to do with thing he encountered. Even at the Illuminati's base, the zombies were acting less… weird.

It wasn't the first ridiculous shit he deal with in England and probably wouldn't be last. He didn't really mind, after all he was actually gaining experience and slowly building reputation and these were always good things to have.

"There was once that very irritating group of quickly regenerating zombies," he said. "But they were carefully engineered in a laboratory. I doubt that every body around here was under the same treatment."

"Nah, these are just really fond of jogging."

Suguro sighed and threw the files on the table and stood up, stretching his back.

"Well, let's get these buggers before they decide to stop for a snack somewhere."

The apothecary shop with "special resources" was right across the street. It was owned by an old Chinese couple, who found it very funny to act in the most stereotypical way possible. Suguro was pretty sure they were visiting auction houses pretty regularly, trying to get their hands on the most ridiculous stuff they could find. It was a surprisingly good business plan, since many people were curious and enjoyed the odd experience, even if the real customers were the member of True Cross Order.

They also had a pretty handy system at work, selling "standard packages" with the stuff that was the most commonly used during missions by any sort of exorcist and "exclusive packages" the members of TCO could combine by themselves and order with a short notice.

It definitely dealt with that awkward problem when the shop was full and the exorcist really needed to stock up on holy hand grenades right now.

"This is pretty handy," Suguro admitted, when they both walked out with neatly wrapped boxes of "All About Zombies" spending no more than five minutes in the shop.

"It was different in Japan?"

"To get to the shop you actually had to use a Key…" he shrugged. "So no tourists or other people."

"Well, we don't have a devil on hand, so people here are dealing with this stuff in a different way."

He was speaking the truth. While they still were wearing Keys with them, they were used only in emergencies and most of them were leading to the Doors Room in the hospital or HQ. To travel anywhere else, they simply used more mundane methods. Like public transportation or cars. This forced them to use hunting rifles rather than semi-automatic guns, because a hunting rifle was much easier to explain if somebody got too interested why they were carrying ranged weapons.

Japan really got it easy.

"For bigger hits we actually have ways to transport the good stuff," Joseph explained, tapping the rhythm of cheesy pop song on the wheel, when they were leaving London behind. "You still have to arrive on the spot by yourself, but all the weapons are waiting and ready to use."

"I do prefer my own stuff," Suguro mumbled, watching the view outside the window. "Even if the model is the same, you still need a time to familiarize yourself with it and you usually don't have that time."

"Oh, yeah," Joseph rolled his eyes. "It's hard to forget all that drama, because you couldn't take that bazooka of yours everywhere."

"Hey!" Ryuji protested. "This was the first thing I got a license for! I… I have created bonds!"

"Of course you did," the older exorcist chuckled, which caused Suguro to argue even more.

At least the ride wasn't boring.

When they finally arrived, Suguro couldn't help himself, but gasp. It looked far worse than he imagined. The zombies not only raised from the graved, but they seemed to dig out everything possible on their way. The cemetery looked more like construction site than place of final rest.

"Damn," he murmured, stepped carefully over toppled piece of gravestone. "I really hope we're not the ones to clean up this mess."

"Well, it's the fourth time," Joseph shrugged and looked around. "I really hope somebody would just deluge the whole place with cement, that would make life so much easier!"

"What could made them so lively anyway?" Suguro huffed and knelled near another tombstone. Or what was left of it. It looked like it was blown up, and into tiny pieces too.

Ryuji picked up one of the stones, looking curiously on its edges, trying to guess how exactly it was destroyed. The break was not really a clean cut. While the stone was smooth, the edge was far from being completely straight. He couldn't find any tracks of any sort of ammunition too or any other kind of things that could tear piece of marble apart, but there was nothing.

"Something interesting?"

"Just more weird," Suguro grimaced standing back up. "Zombies wouldn't be able to do that to the gravestones. But I couldn't find traces of soot or anything at all. Like it just decided to randomly explode, or something!"

"Well, at least the area is evacuated," Joseph shrugged.

"How we even explained that?"

"Gas leak."

"On the cemetery?" Ryuji raised his eyebrows.

"The rest of the city is just right next to us," there was another shrug. "Besides, there always could be something underground, right?"

"This is still weird."

"We can always ask Seven if any magical people got crazy on the cemetery lately if he decide to show up,"

"That's fair," Suguro decided.

They wandered around the graveyard for a bit, finding some more completely destroyed gravestones and even one tree broken almost in half as if a thunder smashed right into it, but there was no signs of fire or anything else.

It was strange, but both of them saw way stranger in their previous cases, so they concentrated on looking for runaway zombies. The ground was completely dry because of how hot the past month was and it was hard like a stone too, so following the trait was mostly looking for bits and pieces of things no one sane would like to find on the ground or trying to guess where the scent of rotting bodies was stronger.

"I think they should've put some sort of a tracker in them, after the second time," Suguro grunted.

"Well, we already know they're heading east," Joseph shrugged. "We only need to catch up to them."

Which was just the thing he shouldn't say out loud. The zombies indeed were heading east and in a straight line too, bumping into fences and buildings like really slow flies over and over again before they somehow managed to reach the corner and walk past the obstacle.

For whatever reason, they weren't acting like a normal, honest to god zombie horde; instead of walking in one nice, big group, they seemed to be actually avoid each other, spreading wider and wider.

But the strangest thing was the fact that they didn't turn back when the exorcists showed up. They actually started to walk faster.

Suguro blinked, not quite understanding, why the undead horde was walking in the wrong direction. "It's just me, or these zombies are acting..."

"Weird?" Joseph blinked. He was staring at the merry group of undead, same as his younger partner.

"I think I don't like this word anymore."

"I think we should follow them,"

"That sound just wrong," Ryuji grimaced. "Like a horror movie in reverse."

"At least it's something new."

Suguro just rolled his eyes. Figures that the old man would be so optimistic; the guy was happy pretty much about everything. They walked a bit faster, hoping to reach the zombies before the undead manage to spread out too wide or go too far.

There was just one problem with that.

"They are running," Suguro said, still unable to believe his eyes. He saw many strange things but zombies actually running away from people were definitely the oddest shit ever.

"Well, let's chase them before they get lost somewhere in there," Joseph grunted. "We should do headcount after we're done too, just to be sure."

Suguro grimaced and kicked at a hand that somebody lost on his way. "I think we should count not only the heads."

"Darn, cleaning it up is going to be a drag," the older exorcist grimaced and took out his phone, quickly writing a message. "I'm so happy I'm not leading an esquire group!"

Ryuji snorted. Of course picking up stuff after somebody else was considered a part of training. From this point it seemed to be even funny, even if he remembered all too well how many goo-monsters he chased himself, because nobody else wanted to touch them. No mention how often he ended up in front of the computer, copying report after report, because someone higher up the ladder demanded to have back-ups in electronic version.

But while he was save from the cleaning duty, his job was still running away in the opposite direction. Directions, to be exact.

"I think we should split, before they get too far," Joseph said, grimacing slightly at another dumb horror movie trope that just gone wrong. "Maybe we can force them to regroup!"

"What are we, cowboys?" Ryuji grunted under his breath, but nodded. Rounding them up before they find some way – because there always is a way, experience taught him that – to get past the blockade and wander into the city, was important.

Joseph turned right, while Suguro marched quickly towards the alley on the left, deciding to go after the monster that seemed to be the farthest away.

"Hey, wait!" Ryuji shouted, but the zombie completely ignored him and just keep on walking further between buildings.

"Now that's just wrong!" he shook his head, then followed the monster. "You're doing your job wrong!"

He felt somewhat offended. It was a zombie, after all and it not only wasn't interested on eating him, but was running away from him. The whole situation lacked only loud screams of fear.

"This is ridiculous," Suguro shook his head and then followed the undead, pulling out his gun. Since he couldn't use his bazooka, he started to take a pistol on jobs like this one. It was an old S&W gun, pretty heavy compared to the newer models and the magazine wasn't the biggest around either, but Ryuji found out that he really liked the elegance of older weapon and how sturdy it was.

He continued to follow the lone zombie until he got a view clear enough to risk a shoot. Sadly, while in the "All About Zombies" box ammunition was included, a silencer wasn't and making unnecessary noise didn't seem to be the best idea with enemy that was already running away.

The single shot tore the silent, still air like a thunder and a moment later, a heavy thud of body falling on the ground followed.

"Really need a silencer," Ryuji muttered, already moving on to meet up with his next target, hoping that the zombies would at least stop their escape for a moment. After all, this sort of undead was always fascinated by the loud, sudden noises. On the other hand, being swarmed by the flood of undead who suddenly remembered about eating brains wouldn't be the best thing to do with his life either.

At least the one that got the furthest away was dealt with and now he could try to use slower, but more silent ways of dealing with this sort of stuff. Considering how quiet it was on Josephs side, the man decided to use sacred seals – or binding ones – to deal with his part of the job.

Suguro grunted and looked around for some nice spot from where he could roughly estimate which road the zombies would choose to follow. After that, he set up a barrier with a handful of paper seals, slapping them on the walls of the buildings and a two lampposts.

It was easier than drawing the whole thing with chalk on the ground. Cleaner too. Besides, he still had to wait around, to put the final one and imprison the undead in a nice ring of protection from evil. Shame they couldn't take any grenades, tossing one in the middle of it would be a god way to finish the job.

Soon enough, the zombies were smashing into an invisible wall, unable to cross a border set up with the seals and he jumped out of his hideout to slap the final one on the trashcan.

"Try to go somewhere now," he smirked, then pulled out his phone and quickly turned on the GPS to mark their position, ignoring the moans of confused zombies. With a group imprisoned in a sphere like that one he could deal later or even leave it for a group of esquires that happened to be on the cleaning duty. A bit of experience was always a good thing for the newbies and this was probably one of the safest way for an Aria beginner to try his skills out.

After Ryuji marked where he left the now very dead undead too, he continued to wander around, trying to find more of them. Some couldn't be spotted from the higher ground, getting stuck in the most ridiculous places and bushes or even falling inside the buildings through windows.

He found another zombie nowhere else, but on the roof of one of the buildings. That one without fire escape on the outside.

"What the fuck are you even doing there?" Suguro groaned. "And how in the world you even climbed so high?!"

Naturally, there was no answer.

Ryuji grit his teeth. He couldn't just leave it for later, standing there and making noise. Even if these zombies seemed to be dumber than usual and not very aggressive, their behavior could change. The demons usually were pretty unpredictable and even the most common of them still could surprise people in rather nasty way. And he hadn't a clear shot either.

Looking around, he didn't managed to find any ladder or stairs leading to the rooftop, the doors to the house itself were also closed. But there was a nice, big trashcan by the side of the building, so it was probably the way zombie managed to get on the roof. Ryuji followed, carefully climbing onto the trashcan and then pull himself up, swallowing cursewords. He was really high and still got trouble with getting up. How in the world something as clumsy as undead managed to get there?

The zombie itself was standing on the other side of the roof, a few steps from the edge, staring at some point in the east for no reason that Suguro could come up with.

Ryuji exhaled slowly and carefully looked around, trying to not lose sight of the zombie for any second. He could spot with ease Joseph moving around in hundred meters or so, trying to scare off two undead from their path and led them towards dead end instead.

Several more were still walking down the streets, still heading more or less in one direction.

He had to deal with them and fast, but before that…

Suguro once again pulled his gun out. He started reciting the holy texts, trying to pinpoint a fatal verse, his voice steady and eyes looking for any sort of a reaction. For over a minute, there was no difference in the undead behavior at all.

Then, all of sudden, it turned towards him, the motion way faster than Ryuji anticipated. He instantly raised his gun and aimed, pulling the trigger in a split of second later. The zombie suddenly swayed, almost like it tripped over its own feet, the bullet flying over it.

"Oh, now you want to fight?!" Suguro growled, aiming again. The blasted thing threw him out of rhythm, so the few last lines he recited were useless and it seemed that there was no time to repeat them at all.

He pulled the trigger again, but the zombie suddenly launched at him, jumping high in the air, so the bullet only nicked its right foot. The undead landed right next to him and tried to grab him instantly, completely ignoring the wound. Suguro stepped back, avoiding the hands with dark, broken fingernails reaching for him, and then he made another step, trying to move towards the middle of the flat rooftop they were on. Fighting right on the edge was dumb, trying to shoot the enemy in the point black range wasn't the best idea either, at least not when said enemy was trying to bite your face off. Ryuji, after few steps found himself on the edge again, forced to dodge a vicious streak when the zombie threw itself at him again.

The damage done to its foot had to be more severe than he estimated, because something suddenly cracked and the undead lost its balance right after that last jump, hitting Ryuji with the whole weight of its body instead of an outstretched arm.

And then, they both fell.

Ryuji hit the ground with heavy impact that forced air out of his lungs. The zombie landed right on top of him, reaching towards his face almost instantly. He grabbed the monster by the shoulder, trying to keep it at distance, while rasping out holy verses.

He wasn't even entirely sure if he was really saying the words, because all the sound seemed to be muted almost completely.

He finished right before his elbow bend under the weight of the monster, dark spots dancing before his eyes, mixing with the ashes the zombie turned into, before it disappeared into nothingness.

"Suguro!" Joseph voice ringed in his eyes.

"I'm okay!" he managed to wheezed out, while still lying on the ground.

The world was still slightly spinning before his eyes and breathing was troublesome; he actually had to force his chest to move.

"You definitely don't sound alright," the other exorcist stated critically.

Ryuji just cursed under his breath and started to get up, using his elbow to push himself up.

"Hey!" Joseph growled. "Should you really move?"

"I'm fine," Suguro coughed. "I'm just out of breath."

"Well, that happen when people fall down from the roofs," Joseph grunted. "And you are bleeding too."

Suguro blinked. To think about it, his left hand felt a little funny.

He coughed again and raised it, so he could get a better look. The sleeve was torn and he could see a long gash on his forearm. It was bleeding, but looked rather shallow otherwise.

"I must have bumped into something on my way down."

"You sure?" There was another question hidden in there.

"It didn't chew on me, I just got knocked out for a moment."

"That shouldn't happen in the first place," Joseph grunted, then helped him to stand up. "Well, at least you don't seem to be concussed. just dumb. And I think you need stitches."

Ryuji bit his tongue and just let the older man scold him all the way he wanted to. He was right, after all, Suguro screwed this one royally, because he wasn't thinking at all. Just chasing the enemy, falling right into dumbest sort of accident and only by miracle didn't break his own neck. Death by falling down the roof with a zombie on top definitely wasn't what he wanted on his gravestone.

"Just give me a minute," Ryuji mumbled, reaching to one of the many pockets of his coat. "I've got bandage on me, I'll wrap it up and we can finish the job here."

The older exorcist rolled his eyes with visible irritation, but waited for him anyway. He didn't help him get up, though. The rest of the mission was uneventful; they managed to finish what they started and trapped undead in a magical circle before they exorcised them back where evil spirits belonged. Joseph was angry when they were finishing the job and continued on being angry when they returned home.

Suguro didn't say a word while the older man kept on ranting about his stupidity. After all, Joseph was right.

"Shirt off," he demanded. "I want to look at your back, to make sure you're only bruised."

Ryuji obediently took it off, trying to not agitate his wound or move too much. He wasn't sure what was hurting more, his hand or his back.

They started with the hand, but Suguro wasn't sure if he was happy about that. Angry Joseph happened to be also a sadistic bastard and not delicate at all.

"Stop wincing and be happy we don't have to go to the hospital," he grunted. "They surely would love to hear your story..."

"Can you knock it off already?" Suguro hissed through his teeth, when Joseph generously covered his forearm with antiseptic. "I know already that I'm one dumb shit, you can stop repeating it over and over again!"

"You really think I will stop this soon?" Joseph raised eyebrows, then returned to his work. "But honestly, that's really lucky. Butterfly or three and we're done."

"By just looking at you I'm starting to think that getting stitches is not that bad idea..." Ryuji murmured.

"Oh, man up!"

The next five minutes were full of pain and Suguro breathed out with relief when Joseph finished wrapping a new bandage around the wound.

it was really short relief, since right after that the other exorcist switched to poking and prodding, checking out if Suguro's ribs weren't broken. They were whole, but his back was way to tender for treating like that.

"You probably should go sleep it over," Joseph finally said with a sigh. "You looks like a shit."

"That sound like a good idea," Ryuji said, too tired to argue.

"Don't bother yourself with the reports, I can do that on my own."

"Thanks."

"Just cut the dumb act already."

Suguro dropped on the bed with a groan.

Sleeping could be a problem, since he definitely wasn't laiyng on his back anytime soon. Sleeping on his side would be an issue too, not only because of his arm, but his shoulders weren't in the best condition too.

He dropped on his stomach, trying to find the most comfortable position, not sure if he would manage to sleep at all.

It took no more than fifteen minutes, sound of flames lulling him to sleep.

xxx

"What happened to you?" was the first thing that fell out of Harry Potter's mouth, because of course everybody just had to ask that.

"Job?" Suguro shrugged. Honestly, he wasn't looking all that bad. A few visible bruises here and there, bandaged forearm and medical gauze covering his left cheekbone. Honestly, he lucked out with mere scratches but people were completely overreacting the whole thing.

"You look like somebody seriously beaten you up," Dudney pointed out, eyeing the exorcist.

"And from where would you know that, Big D?" Harry couldn't stop himself from elbowing his cousin. While Dursleys suddenly decided to turn into somewhat decent people, he wasn't planning on making it easy for them. It was very childish and he shouldn't do that at all, but a little innocent vengeance wouldn't hurt anybody too seriously.

"Oh, bug off, Pothead!"Dudley grunted and showed his bulky hands down his pockets, sulking.

Suguro fought hard to not laugh.

"So, uh..." Harry started awkwardly. "Something new?"

"Besides the bruises?"

"Uh, yeah. It was a few days since last time, wasn't it?" he pointed out.

They exchanged a few messages, but besides that, Suguro was rather occupied with work and trying to stay on top of his studies.

It was all rather exhausting, so meeting the brats was rather nice change.

"I'm not sure if I hate more people who steals all the bodies from the cemetery or when the bodies runs away on their own," Suguro grunted.

"Why somebody would steal the bodies?" Harry gasped, slightly grossed out.

"Zombies are real?" Dudley was more interested in the other thing entirely.

"And are kind of annoying," Suguro agreed.

"So what, one of these bit you, or something?"

"Nah," he winkled his nose and looked away, like he was embarrassed. "It pushed me out of the roof."

"Why were you fighting zombies on the roof?"

"That's the question I'm asking myself," Suguro cringed. He, and everybody else he knew. "Anyhow, my back is killing me, so the gym wouldn't be the brightest idea in the next few days."

"I'm actually surprised you're even here," Harry murmured. He knew from the first hand experience that falling down was not the best thing to happen. Even with the cushioning charms on the grass during Quidditch matches and trainings, the players were in pain, especially on the day after. But they were landing on magical grass and had all sort of spells to magic the bruises and broken bones away. Suguro looked like it wasn't grass he landed on. "Shouldn't you be lying down or something like that?"

"Don't be ridiculous," the exorcist snorted. "I'm fine. And we can visit someplace else instead the gym."

"Should I say "halleluiah" or it's too soon?" Dudley mumbled.

"Decide for yourself," Suguro shrugged. "We're just going to visit a shooting range. I checked the place out before, it's pretty decent."

"You serious?"

"Why not?" Ryuji shrugged. "People are doing it all the time. "

"Why exorcist needs a gun anyway?"

"I told you it is possible to exorcise evil spirits with firearms," Suguro said dryly. "I wasn't lying. We really do that."

"I'm so happy right now that you decided to exorcise me in more traditional way!"

"Dude, you have a gun?" Dudley gasped. "Like license and all?"

"Well... yeah?" Suguro blinked, not exactly sure what all that was about. A gun was just a gun, nothing to be excited about.

"Do you think a gun would even work against magical people?" Harry asked slowly, scratching his chin. The wizarding world seemed to be completely oblivious about muggle technology and everything else too, considering how they looked like during the Quidditch Match the year before. On the other hand, nobody ever told some sort of a dumb anecdote about a wizard meeting a Muggle with a shotgun or something like that. And it would be really hard to not to be aware about stuff that was falling from the skies sixty years ago – wizards usually lived longer, so many of them should remember.

"Well, nobody would expect that."

"I don't think how I feel about shooting people to the death," Harry murmured.

"You can always target his knee," Suguro shrugged. "Getting shoot in a knee would definitely stop evil warlock from waving his stick around."

"I don't even know how to shoot those!"

"No time like now to learn," Ryuji smirked.

Harry wasn't sure if he really wanted to learn how to use a gun, but Dudley was really excited about the whole thing. Besides, trying out new stuff wasn't going to hurt him, especially not when under supervision of people who actually knew what they were doing.

The gun feel odd an unnatural in his hand, all rough shapes, heavy and lacking any sort of grace. The goggles and headphones weren't any better, their weight was making him even more uncomfortable, but Suguro just wouldn't let them take them off even for a moment while at shooting range.

At least Dudley seemed to have fun, even if he missed every single shot, once or twice only managing to hit the piece of paper where the target was drawn.

"This is much more difficult than in the movies," Harry commented, trying to point his weapon at the target. His hands were shaking, even if he wasn't nervous at all.

"Quite," Suguro agreed and then corrected his stance again. Apparently, how he was standing on his legs was much more important that in the wizarding world, where one could duel while sitting if somebody was stubborn enough. The exorcist demonstrated already how easy it was to knock somebody down if he keeps his legs wrong and Harry decided to memorize at least that.

At least casting spells made his accuracy a bit better and most of the shots actually reached the paper, even if only two managed to get past the outer ring of the target.

After they were done, Suguro walked them back home.

And "walked" was a key word that Dudley really started to hate. It was always a trap, but apparently even beaten up exorcist still could wipe the floor with them without any sort of trouble.

Dudley sat down on the bench with a heavy sigh. Then he eyes his cousin and Suguro, feeling pang of jealously.

How these two managed to walk and walk and then walk some more and not even being out of breath. Totally unfair.

At least they stopped somewhere for a snack and it actually was something edible and not these damned grapefruits again. They both still reminded Dudley to choose the diet version of sandwich. At least they were decent enough to buy the same stuff, so he wasn't suffering that much.

Suguro crumbled a little bit of bread and threw it on the ground next to the curb. Harry was eyeing that place too, so Dudley followed. The tiny pieces of bread were disappearing slowly. He would completely miss that, if he wasn't with these two.

"There is something there, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yup," Harry nodded. "And it would be kinda cute, if not... uh, whatever is sticking out of it."

"Is this hard?"

"What exactly are you asking?" Suguro tilted his head.

"Seeing these things," Dusley eyed the disappearing bread again.

"I can't really tell," he admitted. "I was aware of their existence my whole life. Seeing them was just a natural thing, I guess. You eventually get used to them too."

Harry nodded in agreement.

"First few days I probably looked like an idiot," he admitted. "But they really don't mind you. Unless they want food."

"You were always the weird one anyway," Dudley shrugged. "No offence."

"None taken," Harry smirked.

They fed the invisible monsters for some more time, enjoying the evening when the day was finally cooling down.

Of course, the universe just had to remind Ryuji once more, this time using one Vernon Dursley, about that dumb mistake of his.

"You! What in the world happened to you?!"

"Fell down the roof while fighting zombies?"

There was a moment of awkward silence.

"You, uh... you are not joking, are you?"

"No," Suguro sighed deeply. Everybody would probably keep asking about it until his bruises disappear completely. This was going to be a very long week.

xxx

They fell into comfortable routine, waking up early when it wasn't as hot as for rest of the day and wandered to the gym. Sometimes they've meet up with Suguro in there, the other times they were on their own. Dudley definitely preferred the later, because for all the awe his cousin hold towards the Japanese guy and his muscles, Suguro was just too much of a slave driver. Some other times they meet up with the exorcist in the evening, it all depended on his rather full schedule.

Harry discovered with a bit of surprise that his cousin wasn't just a dumb oaf and Dudley sometimes acted like it was a surprise for him too. When he wasn't struggling with not buying sweets when there was a chance to munch something away from hawk eyes of Aunt Petunia, at least.

Just when things finally stopped being ridiculously awkward between them, the evening of the second day of August happened. If not for Mrs. Figg, who pretty much dragged them home after the terrifying experience of meeting the Dementors, they would probably ended up hiding on one of the trees in the park, because there was a slight chance that the blasted creatures didn't know how to climb.

At least, Harry decided with a grimace, the misadventures of the third year at Hogwarts happened to be useful and he knew what to do to stop himself and his cousin from feeling like a miserable balls of depression.

But the bliss of chocolate didn't last for long as well. The Ministry of Magic made sure of that.

"Well," Vernon said, carefully putting the letter back on the table. He was acting like the piece of paper was about to bit him any moment. "This is rather odd."

"Just odd?" Harry protested. "They were acting like I was second coming of fucking Jesus and now they want me out!"

"Language," Vernon barked automatically.

"They are crazy anyway, I was telling you that the whole time," Aunt Petunia said. "You can always go to school somewhere else."

"It would be hard without a wand."

"It's just a stick, you can always get another one," Uncle Vernon just shrugged. "Or you can just ignore the idiots and let them deal with their problems alone. Of course then it would have to be school for kids that are a little bit...uh, late."

Harry grimaced.

But his uncle was right, the magical education while fascinating and full of fireworks was definitely lacking when it came to math and many other subjects. He skimmed once through Dudley books and found himself slightly disturbed at how little he was able to understand. And he was good at math before he started Hogwarts!

"Whatever," he grunted. "What I don't understand is why they are going to break my wand. There were Dementors! They aren't supposed to be around where people live!"

"There shouldn't be that whatever it was on your head in the first place," Vernon cut in.

There was no response to that and Harry knew it well. He tried, for really long, to find a reason why magical people – Dumbledore – let him wander around with a piece of Voldemort stuck to his forehead, but there just wasn't a good answer for that. Either they all were absolutely oblivious to something that was really easy to spot for trained eye, which was disturbing thought on itself or for whatever reason they decided to left it there. Maybe they just didn't know how to take it off, the magical world wasn't mixing well with mundane one in the first place, so having wizards cooperating with exorcists was just wishful thinking…

All the other reasons were too much terrifying to think about.

The notify from the Ministry of Magic about him getting thrown out of school wasn't the only one. Soon after, a very short note from Mr. Weasley showed up and not half of an hour after that another one from the Ministry – this one telling him that he actually will get a chance to say a thing in his defense before they throw him out anyway.

"That counts as slightly better, yes?" Uncle Vernon asked, trying to stay away from the piece of parchment. While he was much, much more tolerant towards anything strange and Harry than he was even before, he still got his issues with touching stuff he considered as weird.

"Yeah," Harry nodded. "I think so, at least."

"Then shoo!" Vernon decided. "You both looks like you're going to drop at anytime, and God help me, I'm not going to drag anybody upstairs!"

They both snickered, but did as they were ordered anyway. There was no point in arguing and besides, they needed the rest anyway.

At least Harry was sure of it when he dropped on his bed. But the sleep wasn't coming to him and stirring in his sheets was just pointless. He groaned and sat down, running fingers through his hair.

Why, in the Merlin's name, his life has to sucks this much?!

A sudden movement startled him a little, but there was nothing to be afraid of anywhere near.

"You fine?" Dudley asked awkwardly, standing in the doors. He probably couldn't sleep either, still haunted by whatever he saw, when the Dementors showed up. Harry was a bit curious, because his cousin was living a very sheltered life, but decided not to ask. The darkest thoughts were always the most private. Demanding that sort of answer so short after they managed to patch a little relations between themselves weren't the best idea.

"Yeah," Harry nodded. "You?"

"Could be better," he grimaced. "And the doctor is going to murder me for breaking my diet, you know."

"That sucks," Harry grimaced.

"Yeah," Dudley mumbled. "Not like I can tell him that I was attacked by soul sucking ghost and that chocolate is the only antidote. Damn, that actually sounds even more ridiculous when you say it out loud!"

"Well, on the other hand you're getting way more exercise than they expected you to have."

"That doesn't change the fact that somebody is going to be charged with murder because of that chocolate. "

They laughed a bit, even if it was just a poor excuse of a joke. Laughter, even nervous was better than awkward silence, or stressing how terrifying the whole situation was.

"You going to call Suguro?" Dudley asked after a few moments.

"Yeah," Harry nodded. "I'm not sure how his kind mix with Dementors, so I should warn him about them."

"Think there might be more?" his cousin voice cracked a bit, heavy with fear.

"Haven't the slightest, sorry," he miserably shook his head.

"That sucks," Dudley grimaced. "I don't even have idea in what direction to run."

"You hadn't even the idea to run in the first place."

"Point," Dudley nodded.

xxx

Ginny wasn't sure if she was excited by moving for the rest of the summer to some old mansion of very ancient magical family, or just irritated by being forced to get used to another place.

It would be an adventure, definitely. But at the same time, there wouldn't be anything new. She was going to be surrounded by her brothers anyway and parents would act even more embarrassing than usual, cooing over her while other people were around. Ginny wasn't just a little girl anymore. She could tough it out if needed.

So she just acted like she didn't care much at all, while entering this old, strange place, where the shadows were moving in darkness, whispering to each other in raspy voices.

All the others, seemed to be oblivious to the shadows moving around them, but it wasn't anything new. It was just like home, only the black was blacker here, flourishing in gloomy atmosphere of abandoned building.

Like her brothers, she was tasked with all the boring, mundane jobs - dusting, degnoming, cleaning up the mess in the rooms after adults were done with shooing away things more serious, like boggarts.

"What are we, house elves?" Ron groaned, after he was handed another cloth and pointed in direction of newly cleared room. They were actually supposed to celebrate since this would be a second bedroom for their use, which meant that there would be no more squishing together like sardines in a can, but Ron was Ron. He just really liked to be grumpy if somebody told him to work.

"Well, we can't use our wands, Ronniekins," George grinned.

"So they have to utilize us in some other way," Fred added. " So be a good house elf and get to work. Chop chop!"

"You just hope for us to do all the work, don't you?"

"Yup."

Ginny groaned.

Like it wasn't bad enough like it was. Mom was constantly breathing down her back, checking every fifteen minutes if she was okay... when she wasn't hissing at her to go away, because adults were talking about important secretive stuff and she wasn't old enough. At least boys were treated the same way.

Besides her family, the constant occupant of this place was no one else than Sirius Black, the not-mass murderer, who was always trying to either get murdered by Snape - who showed himself up from time to time - or just get drunk. He couldn't because every time mom was able to catch him with his hand on the bottle and then she was taking the bottle away, no matter how loud he was whining about it.

To tell the truth, life was more than just unfair to Sirius, forcing him to live in the house he hated the most, just after spending twelve years in the most terrible prison in the world. Ginny was also pretty sure that the man was much less sane than the rest of adult wizards actually believed. Dark things were changing how one viewed life, but nobody could really understand how much until he meet his own darkness. There wasn't even point in trying to explain all the things that suddenly changed. She tried.

Ginny learned how to shrug and left things unsaid, because it was so much easier. And when she wasn't trying to talk, the people acted like she actually got better, healed or something like that.

Liars, both of us, she thought and shook her head, before binding her hair in a tight but messy bun and went to the kitchen in search for fresh rag. After all the alive – or not – magical stuff was done, there was also need of plain simple cleaning. It would be faster with spells, but mom couldn't be everywhere. And all the things needed solid scrubbing by hand from time to time too.

Besides, thank to doing her work right she got more opportunities to listen on adults than anybody else; after a few days of observing her obedient behavior the adults stopped being so suspicious and at times even didn't notice her.

Because of that, she happened to be around, when dad jumped out of the fireplace like he was burning for real, looking shaken and scared.

"Arthur?" Mom looked at dad with worried eyes. "Did something happen at work?"

"If only," he sighed. "Look, I really need to talk to Dumbledore and now. I couldn't Floo him from the job, because of all that mess, but..."

Dad shook his head. "just tell me, do you know where Dumbledore is? In his office?"

"So what happened, Arthur?" Sirius jogged up to them.

"Harry got the warning for using magic around Muggles," he said quickly.

"Huh?" Ginny blinked. "But why? He knows that he can't do that!"

"Well, I'm sure he got some really important reason for using magic. A Patronus charm, no less!"

"Patronus?" Molly asked, a bit too shocked for a moment to actually grasp the fact that her daughter was not only in the room but taking active role in the conversation no less. "But why would he use that?"

"Well," Ginny said slowly. "Maybe he was trying to force us to tell something? I mean, all these letters..."

"Ginny, darling, you know what Professor Dumbledore said, right?"

"Well, I do," she shrugged. "But I think you guys forget to tell Harry why it was so important."

"I'm not sure if Remmy told him Patronuses even can carry stuff," Sirius scratched his chin. Hermione, who sneaked up into the room right behind him, nodded.

The Dementors were too big of a deal to actually think of any other uses for Patronus spell beyond keeping these dark creatures at bay. Besides, Harry was struggling with it to the last moment and all the last year was occupied with that disaster of a tournament instead of something that actually to be useful for him.

Molly shook her head."But if that's the case, then why he used it at all?"

"Maybe he wanted to scare that pig of a cousin away?" Sirius proposed with a shrug. "I would be pretty startled if a giant stag would charge at me out of nowhere… and that brat seems to be a petty damn coward, if you ask me."

"All he needed to do that was to say "Alacazam" or something like that," Hermione snorted. "Besides, he knows better than that!"

"I've already send him a note to not go anywhere if he receive a warning from the Ministry," Arthur ran fingers through his hair in nervous gesture, almost knocking off glassed out of his nose. "I just hope everything will end up fine."

"Honestly, this is very awful of them, looking for a reason to terrorize that poor boy!" Molly shook her head. "And in times like these no less!"

"And if there were Dementors in Little Whining?" Sirius growled. "Then what? And why the hell they were there in the first place?!"

"I don't know!" Arthur put his glasses back in their place. "That's why I need to talk to Dumbledore, the situation is already really tense!"

"It's just a warning, right?"

"No," he shook his head. "It's way worse than that. Two years ago Harry already received one and then there was that case with his aunt last year! The Ministry went straight for the big spells!"

"What are they planning to do?" Hermione asked slowly, gulping. With all that bad press about Harry, she had a really bad feeling about this.

Ginny wasn't sure if she wanted to hear the answer either and carefully eyed the other girl and then adults in the room, almost hoping that somebody would remember that kids are not supposed to hear dark things.

"They want to break. his wand and expel him from school"

"They can't do that!" Hermione gasped. "This is awful!"

"Why are they doing that? He's... he's Harry!" Ginny choked on her words too. The one and only Boy Who Lived, a hero of Magical Britain, the one there was so much stupid books about suddenly was degraded from heroic figure to some sort of street hooligan, just because of dumb things like politics. He wasn't even old enough to actually do stuff like that! It wasn't a basilisk either, he couldn't just go and stab in the eye to cause it stop being so annoying. But then how he was supposed to survive this situation?

"That's the problem," Arthur sighed. "They just don't want believe that's Vol... that's he's back."

"But throwing him out of school? Isn't this too much?" Hermione groaned.

"I'm sure Dumbledore will find a way out of it," he said. Then grabbed a handful of the Floo powder and departed away, leaving them nervous and scared.

Luckily, Professor Dumbledore was able to act quickly and efficiently. Just a few minutes and the sentence hanging over Harry's head was changed from breaking his wand instantly to letting him prove his innocence in several days.

They all breathed out in relief, but the situation was far from over. The answers were desperately needed, not only about the possibility of the Dementors being in so muggle place as Privet Drive, but about who let Harry being attacked too.

Bunch of other adults joined the conversation, showing up at the Grimmaur Place few minutes apart from each other. There was Tonks and Moody and a handful of Aurors Ginny didn't really knew by name. They all sat down by the huge table in unwelcoming and gloom dining room, which temporary acted as a command center. The bright stains on walls, where once portraits of members of Ancient and Noble House of Black only added to how uncomfortable everyone felt in this place. It at times felt like the empty places were staring at people with accusation in their eyes, but without voicing opinion out loud, like that loud painting right by the entrance.

"Who let that happen in the first place?" Sirius shook his head. "I through you people were watching him!"

"We were watching him!" A very young Auror woman stood up, blush creeping on her cheeks when she was trying to defend herself and all the other people with guarding duty. Ginny liked her, but knew only a little about her; only that she was Sirius cousin, could change her appearance at will and preferred to go by her last name.

"Then how in the Merlin's name you managed to miss something like that?!"

"How in the world should I know?" Tonks protested. "I mean, we were observing his house constantly, and there's that charming old squib across the street too!"

"Charming?"

"She's constantly offering me cookies."

"Cookies!" Sirius growled. "Dementors could be wandering right next to his house and you're talking cookies!"

"I do believe it was Mundungus turn?"somebody added helpfully, probably hoping for keeping Black for turning into a dog and trying to show his disapproval through biting people. He already tried that once, when the Order just moved in and they were about to start cleaning job. It wasn't pretty.

"Mundungus!" this time it was Molly who gasped with sheer disgust. "You let that sort of a man anywhere near Harry? What were you thinking?"

"Mung is an useful man…" one of the Aurors started carefully.

"He's a criminal, for Merlin sake!" Sirius growled. Then stopped for a moment, realizing how awkward it end up coming out of his mouth. "A real one, anyway!"

Before they really started a fight, there was a loud crack in the air and suddenly Dumbledore was in the room, his arm wrapped protectively around shoulders of an old, delicate looking woman. She was wearing slippers and her grey hair seemed need both a comb and a bath.

"I see you started without me," he noted, eyeing everybody with amused smile.

"The situation is quite troublesome, " the same Auror as before decided to voice his opinion. "And we're all very worried."

"Everything is going to be fine, I'm sure of it," Professor Dumbledore said warmly, then let the woman to one of the free seats. "This is my dear friend Arabella. She happened to be in the right place to see everything."

"Then why didn't she do anything?" Molly frowned, looking at her with a distance.

"I'm a squib, dearie."

"Oh!" she gasped, putting hand to her mouth. "I'm sorry!"

The old woman just waved at her, letting it go. It was probably not the first time she went through this awkward point of the conversation, when the wizards and witches were clueless how to act around somebody who was unable to cast a spell.

"Please, Arabella, tell us everything you now. Maybe we can find some sort of answer," Dumbledore said smiling kindly, and gesturing towards the sofa.

Arabella nodded stiffly, then sat down carefully, on the edge, like she was afraid that the antique sofa was about to bite her any time.

"The boy seemed to be in very poor mood after he arrived back home," she started.

Dumbledore was the only one who didn't cringe after that.

"That understandable," he said softly. "He went through much, after all. Please, continue."

The old woman nodded and started telling the tale of how life in Privet Drive went, with all the details she managed to squish in.

"A little while ago a young man started showing up, I believe he's a friend of Dudley," she continued. "Quite scary looking, I must admit, but that boy was always looking for trouble, so I'm not that surprised."

"But they didn't hurt Harry, right?" Molly asked, quite worried. She was telling Albus and anybody else who wanted to listen that the Dursleys were never a good family for such sweet kid like Harry and she was afraid for the boy. Had a reason to do so too, considering how much he needed the rescue from their house before second year of Hogwarts even began.

"No, no!" Arabella shook her head. "It's more like the boys finally found the common ground and are constantly going somewhere together."

"Yeah," Moody grimaced. "Which made looking after him all that more troublesome. Honestly, giving him house arrest would prevent any sort of trouble!"

"Alastor, how can you say things like that!" Molly scolded him. "It's a boy, he need to move! Sitting in the house is unhealthy!"

"Whatever," the Auror grunted. "What's done it's done."

Arabella continued her story about boys doing boyish things. Before she got to the part with Dementors, she managed to really bore the Order members.

"They really were there, the Dementors," Arabella said, her voice slightly shaking with emotions. "Horrible creatures! The boys barely managed to escape and only because of the Patronus Charm!"

"It was only Mr. Potter and young Mr. Dursley who were attacked?"

"Yes," Mrs. Figg nodded again. "Dudley's new friend was showing up every few days. I think he is studying some muggle thing, so he can't be around all the time..."

"Whatever, who would care about some Muggle anyway," Alastor grunted.

"Well, the danger to Mr. Potter can go from any direction, isn't it right?"

"I'll sooner become a ballerina than Death Eaters would invite some Muggles to play," Alastor snorted.

"I do have agree," Molly added. "We have other things to worry about."

"I'm sure I can work something out at the Ministry," Dumbledore.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** Hello again! I'm really grateful for all the reviews and other forms of support! It's really crazy how many people decided to follow this story, I never expected something like that!  
Right now, I'm slowly going through editing stuff that was already published - no changes in the storyline, just making the chapters more readable.  
I'll try to keep up the updates monthly, but the next one might be late - I'm going to be pretty occupied with real life.

**Chapter 5**  
**A Curious Case Of A Very Bored Goat**

Not being on the active duty didn't mean that Ryuji had all the time he wanted just for himself.

Actually, it was a reason why he was spending even more time working by the desk. Now he understood perfectly well why teach Okumura had always energy drinks on hand. This stuff was hopelessly boring.

At least when he was talking his face of about demons of Japanese origins his audience wasn't bunch of inexperienced kids but full fledged exorcists, so he was spared all the dumb questions. Well, most of them. When he wasn't at job he was supposed to rest from, he was either trying to not get thrown out of school, or he was keeping himself in shape and trying to have eye on Harry. At least Suguro was able to mix together the last two things together, otherwise he would be forced to drop sleeping.

How exactly Joseph imagined it to be resting?

Suguro shook his head. The old exorcist was probably just getting his petty revenge out of it.

He groaned, then continued on typing. He wanted the whole case about the zombies - well, excluding his stupid fall - archived and accessible for the rest of his group. Maybe someone would be able to tell him, why these undead suckers were so eager to jog around the town, no matter how many times they were send to the other side.

Shortly after finishing the cram school and officially gaining their first Meisters, they happened to have more and more missions in pairs instead as a whole group. Sometimes not even that, instead of working with people they weren't even familiar with. Konekomaru decided that it was time to put some sort of a system together. Soon enough a database was created, easily accessible to all of them, no matter where they were.

It was a good way to check out if the others were fine too. After some mishaps with very badly placed calls - for example right in the middle of mission that required stealth - Neko added a function that automatically showed up list of people that were active for the last twenty-four hours.

It was really useful, especially after they started to travel further and further away.

/Even zombies are running at your sight?

It was a reaction he pretty much expected, but still snarled at the screen.

/Rin, if you have nothing important to share then get out.

/Rude!

/You bring it on yourself. Bon, I do not know how somebody would be able to summon familiars for distance long enough to not be visible.

/Could there be a summoning ring somewhere on that graveyard?

/If that was the case then this would have occurred long time ago. It was only a month since they started to rise.

/Fair point. Send the history of that place, not only the graveyard, I'll try to find something similar.

Ryuji groaned. Great. While he hadn't anything specific about spending a lot of time in the libraries, he really had enough work by the desk right now. But no choice now. Once Miwa set his mind onto something, there was no turning back, so the archives it was. Maybe he could talk somebody with esquires under his wing to lend a hand?

He scratched his chin. Definitely worth a try, the new recruits needed to learn how to search for important things through lots and lots of useless data after all.

"I'm getting lazy," Ryuji groaned, stretching his arms. "Way too much time with the idiot!"

It really wasn't Suguro's fault that he got stuck with Rin for almost a year, since he could control him almost as good as the other Okumura. Or so Mephisto said. It was probably either him or Angel and really, everything was better than leaving Rin anywhere near the Paladin. There was many more reasons for putting them on one team, starting with the origins of Kurikara to the fact that their Meisters were a neat combination.

After spending so much time it wasn't all that strange for something to rub in, no matter how irritating it was.

Ryuji hoped that Rin at least got something annoying out of it too, otherwise it just wouldn't be fair.

He tapped an quick answer and turned the computer off. He had people to hunt down.

xxx

Hunting down exorcist involved in some way with esquires and pages was pretty simple; he had to just wait in the kitchen for somebody to show up.

It was probably the biggest room in the whole building, because some bright soul decided, that smashing the walls between two different flats on the ground floor was a good idea.

Besides, it definitely made moving inside the whole building way less complicated.

And turned the kitchen into the main common area. There even was not one but two wide tables by the wall and a bunch of chairs - each one completely different from another - and two ovens, so nobody would fight over a cooking place. On the other hand, nobody was really interested in cooking at all and were living mostly on TV-Dinners and take-outs. Besides tea, because these people for some strange reason found proving the stereotypes to be right utterly hilarious.

Suguro sat down by the table and continued to work on his next presentation about oriental demons. While he had a chance to drop one job on somebody else, there was no reason for not working on another one while he had some time on hand. If he had unlucky day today, then he would just wind up with materials for another one or two session ready to go at any time.

"Fancy seeing you here," and he didn't end up waiting for really long at all.

Suguro smiled. "Same goes for you, May."

Mbali May was in her mid-thirties and before she became an exorcist she was a model. Seemed to enjoy this job much more and probably was the best tamer not only in the cell, but the whole south region of Britain. And she was one of the people Suguro needed, currently monitoring first year of the esquires.

"Cut the sweets and start talking," she rolled her eyes. "What do you want?"

"Is this that obvious?"

"Pretty much," May grinned widely at him. "Nobody bring job down here, so you want something from somebody. By the way, normal people use newspapers to look innocent, you know."

"Never liked crosswords too much," Suguro mumbled, a bit ashamed that he was busted so easily. "But yeah, you're right, I need something."

"From me?" May raised eyebrow.

"More or less?"

"Talk," she ordered nonchalantly, sitting down in front of him, her big, dark eyes shining with interest.

So he told her vaguely about the irritating way too lively zombies and how he needed to borrow some esquires and pages to do the boring part of his job. All that, while trying not to stare at her too much. At least Ryuji wasn't as awkward as during the first week here, when the wide race diversity smacked him right in the face. He knew it would be different in London than it was in the Japan, but seeing was the whole different thing than knowing.

Besides, she was just oozing with self-confidence, turning every small defect into one hell of an advantage. Even the scars, bright white lines shining on the dark skin, she was wearing like the most precious jewelry.

"Ah!" Mbali laughed quietly, when he finished speaking about the weirdly acting zombies. "These!"

"You meet them too?"

"Nah," she waved her hand at him. "But your partner is quite the gossip, you know."

Suguro grimaced.

"So, how was the flight?"

Ryuji moaned and hid face in his hands, wishing to be someplace else. "Bug off, will you?"

"This is not going to die so easily," Mbali warned him. "Especially since you royally pissed Joseph off, you know."

"How many times I need to say that I get it?" he groaned.

Then shook his head. He wasn't hanging out around here just to moan about stupid gossiping people and being ashamed by dumb mistakes.

"Anyhow, I think they will be back in a few days. Or that this could happen somewhere else, so it would be useful to learn something about how it happened in the first place."

"And you think the answer is in the archives?"

"Worth a try," he said. "Besides, the kids need to learn how to do this stuff anyhow..."

"And you are just too lazy to do it yourself, aren't you?"

"More like I have enough on my plate as it is," Suguro said. It's not like she wasn't there when he was stuck in the auditorium, talking about demons and explaining differences in their behavior in comparison to the European monsters.

"Well, keep your notes, then," Mbali shrugged. "If you piss Joseph enough you will end up with new bath of pages on your very own hand."

Ryuji snorted. "I'm not planning to become a teacher."

"And you really think he will let you decide?" she chuckled. "This is so very naive of you!"

"Whatever," he mumbled, making mental note to try and not do anything stupid anytime soon. "Can I borrow your kids?"

"I can send them, why not," the woman opened the fridge and then grimaced. "And if you find out who is stealing my yoghurt I would be deeply grateful."

Suguro decided it was definitely time to get away from the kitchen, before he accidentally say a thing too much. Since Joseph was still pissed off, outing his little stealing habits would be a really bad thing to do.

xxx

Compared to the magical books, the stuff exorcists were learning from looked rather underwhelming. It was just a book, pretty thick and with cover that definitely saw the better times and many, many hands. It looked almost like it was about to fall into pieces when handed wrong. The paper was yellow and crumbled on the edges and there was almost as many loose pieces of paper shuffled between the pages of the actual book.

The letters weren't as straight an usually in book, probably written with use of a writing machine instead of computer.

The drawings were unmoving, which wasn't all that surprising, considering they were created by Muggles. Mostly black and white, sometimes - mostly added to the loose pages - there were photographs in color too.

All were gloomy, dry and looked like mix between pure scientific research and ancient drawings of mythological creatures. For some reason, they were looking really upsetting, even like that. The dry notes on the margins and over the small letter weren't helping the matter at all. They were telling about how to defeat these things after all and they weren't exactly shying off from dealing with the problem in the most... sufficient way.

On the other hand, nobody was shying off from the most gruesome details about how the monsters were killing people either.

This, Harry decided, was stuff straight from the Restricted Section of the library. If even somebody was even keeping that sort of stuff at Hogwarts, where curious students could be exposed to something as gruesome as this.

He knew that the exorcist was curious about magic, so they actually exchanged books. Harry couldn't help himself, but add into the mix the toothy, aggressive volume that Hagrid asked them to purchase when he started to teach, curious how Suguro would react.

He should have expected it.

The moment the book tried to take a bite from him, was followed second later with the volume hitting the floor with loud spat.

Then the exorcist stepped on it, hard. And then again.

"You little piece of shit, do you think you can chew on me just like that?!" Suguro growled.

The book whimpered miserably.

After that, it was obedient like a good dog, probably absolutely scared of getting stepped on again.

Exorcists were truly terrifying people, Harry decided.

Comparing both worlds was an interesting experience for both of them. The magical creatures and things that exorcists called demons were both similar and completely different at the same time. The Goblins Magical World knew about were completely different from the things they knew. Dementors acted like spiteful spirits, but weren't them. Even the ghosts were different.

"How come you never knew about this?" Harry asked, blinking, when they talked about it for the first time. "I mean, if you guys were fighting monsters for long time now, you definitely had to bump into some of them, right?"

"Point, "Suguro nodded. "But as far as I understand, all the magical things are in hiding, right?"

Harry chewed on his lip for a moment. "That makes sense, I guess... But still, nothing?"

"Isn't it the same in every world?" Suguro smirked. "You are never told all the details, all the secrets are never revealed."

"So, you think somebody knew?"

"Oh, I'm pretty sure of it."

"But isn't that unfair?" Harry protested. "I mean, somebody could get seriously hurt just because he didn't know what he was dealing with!"

"We have a lot of safety protocols," Suguro murmured. "The death rate is so high, because... uh, damn, nevermind."

There was a story behind it and he wasn't sure he wasted to hear it, considering how the exorcists expression darkened.

Back then, Harry decided not to ask and instead changed topic to something more comfortable for both of them. But now, when he was sitting at home completely alone, he couldn't help himself, but think back and trying to guess what it was.

The Dursleys ventured with Dudley quite early that day, managing to squish visit with every doctor in one day; since his cousin weigh was still an issue and Aunt Petunia got slightly paranoid that he would get overboard and actually hurt himself by following his new workout schedule. Dudley, naturally, wouldn't listen to her, because he had a new goal in his life – he wanted to get a better set of muscles than Suguro and Harry couldn't quite decide if it was the most stupid thing in the world or just awkwardly adorable.

Anyhow, Aunt Petunia made a bunch of phone calls and the family had no other choice than to follow her instructions. Harry, somehow, managed to excuse himself from the whole deal, but now he had no idea what to do with himself. The homework was already done and he wasn't in the mood to randomly read through his schoolbooks again. Besides, he borrowed the most interesting ones to Suguro anyway.

Harry quickly discovered that TV was completely not his thing and it didn't change this evening either. He turned it on, then proceed to switching through channel after channel looking for anything that would be even slightly interesting, but he failed to find anything. So, five minutes and over a hundred channels later, he was still bored out of his skull.

For a moment he toyed with the thought of calling Suguro, but Harry didn't want to annoy him too much. It was pretty easy to tell that the young exorcist was a really busy person. It was already awesome that he somehow managed to squish some free time out of his schedule just to hang out, since he was having the job with really odd – and quite often long – hours and school to top that. Besides, what he could tell him? I'm bored, please, do entertain me?

Harry shook his head. That would be just ridiculous and totally bratty thing to do. He wasn't five. He groaned and stood up, deciding that taking a long bath and then going to sleep was the best thing he could do at the moment.

It was just the moment when the magical world suddenly remembered that one Harry Potter actually existed. With a loud crack of apportantion, several figures suddenly appeared in the middle of the neat salon, at least two of them leaving dirty footprints on the shiny, wooden floor.

Harry was startled, but after he recognized the odd posture of Alastor Moody – probably this time the real one – and slightly hunched figure of Remus Lupin, he relaxed slightly and let the annoyance hit him. He had no idea how many times he had cleaned this floor on his knees, making sure the wood looked shiny enough and without any marks and here they were in their dirty shoes, casually leaving bits and pieces of whatever was on their soles on that pretty floor of his.

Then they told him that he was supposed to pack his bags and go with them.

"Just like that?" he asked.

"There's no time for that, boy!" Moody barked at him. "Now, hurry on!"

"I think I need to talk to my aunt and uncle first..." he mumbled, not really eager to leave the Privet Drive. Because going back to the magical world was same to jumping back into the middle of madness, no mention no way to contact Suguro – and keeping in check with the exorcist was really important, even if he couldn't really name the reason why. Harry didn't feel quite ready to return to the magical world just yet. He had the most peaceful summer vacations ever and felt almost cheated by people appearing without any previous warning and demanding that he needed to go back right now.

"Don't be silly, we don't have time to deal with the muggles," Moody hissed. "Somebody would visit them later."

"And they are supposed to be just fine with discovering in the morning that I'm not here?"

"Harry," Lupin sighed, putting his hand on Harry's shoulder. "I know this is difficult, but we need to go now. It's really important."

"Sure," he huffed. "Right. Now it is important. And a month before..."

"We are going to explain everything when we arrive at the place, okay?" Remus said quickly. "Now, where are your things?"

Harry sighed heavily.

xxx

The Grimmaur Place nr 12 was a rather gloomy place, Harry decided. It looked more like hideout of a villain than the hangout place of the good guys. Even with the curtains teared down from the windows, it was still dark inside and the old tapestry in shades of green and midnight blue wasn't helping to make it feel more homey.

Everything – the furniture, the old portraits in heavy frames, the giant chandelier still covered in thick, complicated spider web that somehow got forgotten during the cleaning – looked more like a mausoleum than a real house people were supposed to live in.

And there were a lot of them, Harry noted, looking around. The people who brought him here, a few more faces he was unfamiliar with, Hermione and Ron, and Ron's mom, so somewhere probably was the rest of the Weasley family. Sirius probably was around somewhere too, Remus already told him who this place belonged to.

"Harry!" Ron grinned widely, when he spotted him. "How to good to see you, mate!"

Then he hugged him tightly in a split of second crossing the distance between them.

Harry tensed.

"Guess so..." he murmured, humorlessly, not hugging back. Maybe he was acting like a brat, but hell, Ron was even worse. Like Harry wasn't sending him letters with desperate pleas for a whole freaking month.

"Harry, we were worried..." Hermione was no better.

"Really?" Harry grunted, unwrapping himself from Rons arms. "Wouldn't think so."

"Harry," she sighed. "I'm really sorry we couldn't write anything important, but Professor Dumbledore told us..."

"Dumbledore?" he shook his head. "Why would he even care about you writing to me about what is really going on in the magical world?"

"Well, he said that you needed some time on your own, to deal with all that happened in the fourth year..."

"No," Harry shook his head. "That was not what I needed at all. My letters hadn't give you any clue?"

"But Professor...!"

"I don't fucking care about Dumbledore!" Harry growled. "I needed to know what is going on! Do you even know how does it feel, when you're just sitting there, waiting, worrying sick that there is something really bad going on?"

Hermione shoulders slumbered with embarrassment.

"Right you are," Harry huffed, mercilessly continuing his rant. "Silence. Silence was all I received from all of you. Are you guys proud?"

"Guess so..." he murmured, humorlessly. Maybe he was acting like a brat, but hell, Ron was even worse. Like Harry wasn't sending him letters with desperate pleas for a whole freaking month.

"Harry, we were worried..." Hermione was no better. Nor the only one.

Harry found himself in a very awkward situation with a nothing else than a real queue of people wanting to hug him and ask how he was doing. And not waiting for the answer, since somebody else wanted to hug him.

He had also the amazing experience with meeting the old lady Black, screeching from her portrait and observing Sirius sneering back at her.

Was he seriously living in this mansion with that thing on the wall? Harry was sure that this wasn't the best thing for Sirius. After over a decade in the Azkaban prison, with the Demetors roaming around, he really shouldn't be in place so dark. Harry didn't know much about the evil spirits and everything connected to the demons, but just seeing how many Coal Tars were flying around - swarming around his head to the point he could barely see Sirius's eyes - this just couldn't be good.

"I'm fine," he said, hoping that would cause all these people to give him a moment to breathe. "I really am. But I need to talk to Professor Dumbledore. Is he here?"

"Harry, darling, Professor Dumbledore is a really busy man..." Mrs. Weasley started.

"That's kind of important?" he added awkwardly. He really needed to ask about that Voldemort wraith. Did he knew about it, being with him? Did he suspected it? And how the piece of dark lord soul got stuck on his forehead in the first place... Harry would be glad with even a some sort of dumb theory, something quickly made up.

"If this is about the letter from the Ministry, then don't worry," Lupin smiled warmly at him and put a his hand on Harry's shoulder. "Everything is going to end just fine, they have no reason to throw you out."

"They seems to think otherwise," Harry deadpanned. "But this is not it. Still important, through."

"You're not worried about the process?" Sirius blinked with a clear surprise.

"But Harry!" Hermione gasped. "This is really important, don't you see what they are doing?"

"Sort of but not really?" he shrugged. "Listen, really, it's fine. I just have something more important to talk about with Dumbledore and I really would like to do it as fast as possible."

"If this is about all the question in yours letters..." Mrs. Weasley started.

"That's important too, but no." he shook his head. "I still want the answers, but since nobody wanted to give me these..."

He shrugged." It seems like I don't need to know anything about what's going on in the magical world at all, right?"

"It's not that!" Hermione said quickly. "It's just..."

"We couldn't write anything, because somebody could get his hands on the letters," Lupin carefully explained. "I'm sorry, but we couldn't endanger anybody in such way."

"But you uh... stopped writing," Ron pointed out, not looking at him and scratching back of his neck, clearly ashamed. " Does that mean, that... you know, you're okay now? Or you just gave up on us?"

Harry blinked. That was the truth, after the whole deal with the exorcism, he tried to write, but had no idea how to explain things. And since his friends clearly didn't care enough to explain stuff to him… Well, there wasn't much else to write about. So he was promising himself that he will send the letters tomorrow, and when the next day come he was sure that he will be done on the another day for sure. The days just flew.

Finally, Harry just shrugged again. He felt like they deserved the truth, so there was no point of sugar coating a single thing.

"Both, I think."

"Now, Harry I don't believe there's a reason to be so harsh..." Lupin said quickly, trying to be some sort of neutral medium between them.

His mouth moved on its own before he even realized it."Sorry, but you're no better."

"Harry, we have our reasons..."

"Yes, you probably did," he sighed. "But think for a moment, how it looked like from my perspective. I... I just saw somebody die right in front of my face and then Voldemort literally rised from the grave. And then I was just put away at the Dursleys, with no one to talk to."

"We were here all the time, mate!" Ron hurried up with explanation. "But we really don't know anything, all the adults do is so hush-hush that even Fred and George can't get a word..."

"Ron!" Lupin hissed. "You shouldn't be ever trying to spy on us! It's really dangerous!"

"But we want to help!"

"You're just kids, you shouldn't worry about things like that!" Mrs. Weasley hurried up with explanation, hushing her son when he tried to protest.

"Well, funny you mention Voldemort," Harry grinned. That was probably not the very best thing to do in his situation and would freak out everybody, but he really needed to talk to Dumbledore. "Because we sort of have meet this summer. I think I'll need to talk to Professor Dumbledore-"

He couldn't even finish the sentence.

"What?!"

"Harry, are you all right?"

"Now I'm fine, but before that... did you knew that I was running around with piece of Voldemort souls stuck to my forehead all the time since he outed himself at Halloween all these years ago?"

"Harry James Potter, these jokes are not funny at all!"

"But I'm not joking," he said. "Uncle Vernon decided to actually do something and contacted an exorcist. And so, I was exorcised. Imagine my surprise, when it actually worked and a fucking Dark Lord came out of my forehead!"

Mrs. Weasley gasped, through Harry wasn't exactly sure, why. Was it because he was talking about Voldemort – using his name, for Merlin sake! – or was it was about the foul language or just the information was what on his forehead all that time?

"This was just some sort of a trick, I'm sure of it!" Sirius said, but his eyes were telling otherwise. He exchanged odd stares with Lupin.

"An exorcist!" Hermione gasped. "But that's… that's just ridiculous!"

"He probably hoped to exorcise the magic out of me and that's what the exorcist expected to deal with too. Well, actually they expected to have just talk an idiot out of some dumb stuff he believed in or send him to a hospital to get his head checked, or something." Harry explained.

"That's horrible, man!" Ron looked at him, his eyes wide. "Could they even do that? Take the magic from you?"

"I don't think so…" he murmured. "Funny, I never asked about that."

"Wait, wait!" Sirius shook his hands. " So your muggle uncle was just walking around babbling about magic around other muggles?"

Harry blinked. "Yeah?"

"That's not important at the moment!" Mrs. Weasley hissed at him, then looked at Harry with a worried expression on her face. "Are you sure you're okay, dear? Did they hurt you?"

"No, they were totally fine!" he said quickly. "But they said that the dark spirit being in me was messing with everybody's heads, something with bad stuff not able to cross through the wards around the house."

"They told them about the wards?!" Lupin groaned painfully.

"Er, no. One of them could see the wards just fine. Whatever these wards actually are."

"That's ridiculous!" Sirius shook his head. "You can't see the wards, that the whole point about them! You don't set them up so they could shine around your place like a giant Christmas tree! And a muggle seeing them, that's just…!"

"Well," Harry stepped back a little, because his Godfather was getting louder and louder with every word he spoke. "I don't know how he was able to see them. And that's not the point. The thing is, the Voldemort was there and I have no idea why. That's why I want to talk to Dumbledore."

The glances were exchanged. Hermione and Mrs. Weasley were still fretting over him, while Ron was just standing there, not sure what to do with himself. Once or twice he twitched, like he wanted to walk towards Harry and do something, but stopped himself, a sour expression blooming on his face.

Finally, the decision was made and Professor Lupin walked away to contact Professor Dumbledore by a Floo. Meanwhile, Mrs. Weasley shooed them all to kitchen, probably because she decided that food was just the thing everybody needed.

Harry spend the next few moments jabbing potatoes on his place. He wasn't really hungry, but he didn't want to hurt Mrs. Weasley feelings.

Professor Dumbledore, alarmed by the news, showed up pretty quickly and asked him to go someplace where they could talk in peace and Harry obediently followed, suddenly feeling slightly nervous. The joyful tingle in Headmaster eyes was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was a serious air around him. The little demons in his path probably were able to tell that too, because they were jumping out of his way even before he was about to bump into them, creating a clear path in the dark corridor.

They settled in a room that served as a bedroom for Ron and his brothers, considering the mess inside. Ron trousers were lying on the floor, next to a sock without a pair, and the beds were covered with a lot of different stuff too. Clothes, unwrapped candy and just the wrappers, sparkling in the dim light. Headmaster carefully put away a sport magazine with some Quidditch team flying on the cover and sat down.

Harry decided to take a chair, because he only had to grab all the clothes on it and throw them on the other one instead of digging a bit of space for himself on the other bed.

"So…" he started awkwardly. "Can you tell me something? About Voldemort, I mean. Why he was..."

Harry stopped, looking for the right words and failed in his search.

"I would really like to see the exorcism for myself, if you don't mind," the old wizard said.

"See?"

"Ah, yes! Just concentrate on the memory and I'm going to extract it with my wand," Dumbledore explained. "Do not worry, this is not going to hurt and you're still going to remember it."

"Okay?" Harry said with a small shrug. He didn't really understood where the old wizard was going with all that, but if it was going to help, then he had nothing against rolling with it.

A moment later, a silver mist was floating around the wand, shiny and elegant. Harry didn't know how exactly the thoughts were supposed to looks like, but he wasn't expecting something so… neat coming out of his head. Especially now, when he was still battling his own emotions, unable to say if he was anxious, angry or just sad about being left alone for so long.

Headmaster waved his wand and the silvery thought suddenly exploded around them in a blast of colors. Harry gasped, surprised by sudden light and blinked. When he opened his eyes, the memory was spread around them, the messy room still visible behind, but dimmed and dark compared to bright colors and silhouettes of people that seemed to be shining.

Harry felt rather odd, suddenly facing himself from few weeks ago, sitting on the floor by the bed with a really scared expression on his face. The t-shirt on his memory-self looked dirty, just like the rest of his room and Harry eyed carefully the headmaster, feeling the blush creeping up into his cheeks, but the old wizard seemed to be completely absorbed by observing what was going on.

The moment when the wraith manifested itself was almost as terrifying as when he lived through the whole situation, a menacing shape creating itself from the darkness around. It was growing rapidly, towering above everyone in the memory, draining the colors from the world.

Harry tore his eyes from the Dark Lord and looked at the Dumbledore instead. Just then, the wraith spoke in the unclear words and raspy, high–pitched voice and Headmasters eyes widened slightly.

"What was he talking about, Professor?" he asked quietly.

Dumbledore was silent for a moment and Voldemort was burning in the middle of the room that seemed to lose its clarity for a moment; the silhouettes of everybody turned fuzzy like he lost his glasses or something, the colors blending together into vague stains. Then, suddenly everything looked fine once again. Voldemort was dying and Coal Tars were flying furiously around, trying to get away from the blazing fire only to stop rapidly in front Suguro.

Who didn't looked quite human either, standing in the fiery blaze himself, flames dancing on his skin, seeming to rise straight from the small cut on his hand. The fire seemed to take a shape of some sort of a winged creature, but it was so bright, Harry couldn't stop his eyes from watering. But he stared anyway, not sure how the whole thing with memory worked. He was really sure that all he saw during the fight was lord Voldemort spirit and then a sudden burst of fire. So why now could he gaze into Suguro's burning, bright eyes?

Harry shook his head. That wasn't important at the moment. What really matters…

"Can you explain why he was there, sir?" he asked. "I mean, he already have a body, so how it was possible for him to be… there?"

Dumbledore was silent for a few moments. After he finally decided to speak, his voice was quiet, and for some reason, he sounded old.

"Three years ago, you showed me a destroyed diary. Since then, I suspected that Voldemort have done something truly terrifying. This…"

The headmaster shook his head.

"Did you suspected that he had done something to me?"

"Please, Harry," Dumbledore looked straight at him, his pale blue eyes had a truly serious look. "Give an old man some time to put his own thoughts together. "

"Well, he sort of came right out of my head, so at least some explanation…" Harry found his mouth running and bit his tongue, feeling slightly ashamed. "Sorry. I didn't mean to sound like that… but I'm really scared. I just want to understand, what happened."

"Me too, my boy."

xxx

Sitting in a lone chair in the middle of really huge room, surrounded by gloomy looking members of Wizengamon, Harry Potter by all means should be at the end of his wits, sweating and panicking between fits of utter frustration.

He probably would be doing that just now, if not for the goat.

Because there was a goat, right in front of him, mere few feet away, staring at him with apathetic eyes.

The goat looked utterly bored and like it needed a bath rather desperately; tangled fur that once could be whiteish has uncomfortable grey coloring to it and there were disturbing dark spots on it too, especially around goat's jaw.

The wizards were completely oblivious to her existence and Harry Potter found that fact astonishing.

Here they were, glorious and mighty, refusing to believe in mass murdered return, snapping at him every time he tried to open his mouth to try and answer their questions and they hadn't the slightest idea that there was ghost of a goat in the middle of their courtroom.

His aunt was right, wizards were beyond ridiculous.

The whole thing looked like taken right out of some B class movie about unjust world or something like that, just with weird violet clothes and with people who were not even trying to hide the fact that they were insulting each other – and him, mostly. Especially the toad–like lady, who seemed to love the sound of her own voice, since she was going on and on, sweetly spitting more and more absurd words.

The goat looked completely disinterested.

He tried to tell them about the Dementors, since somebody asked, but besides being amazed about his ability to use a Patronus Charm, nobody really listened to him. Then Arabella Figg, who just conveniently happened to be a squib, tried to tell them the same story.

The toad-like lady jumped at her chance and started telling poor Mrs. Figg what she was supposed and not see. Harry Was pretty sure the goat snickered.

"Mister Potter!" somebody demanded his attention. "Are you even listening?!"

"Aha," he said, nodding. His brain still felt like something was broken inside.

They were hidden society of very proud people, because they knew something about the world that mundane muggles did not. They lived among magical beast, so sure that they saw it all and knew best, because they had power and could do whatever they want...

And now Harry had the greatest proof that they were not that special. There was yet another hidden world, that seemed to be even more dangerous than magical one and muggles were doing just fine, inviting a way to fight they way through the pure horror, while wizards were completely oblivious to ghostly goat existence.

The spirit seemed to share his sentiment. It chewed a few times on nothing then tilted head a little, eyeing for a short moment Dumbledore - and when exactly he showed up anyway? - who was in the middle of very complicated speech about morality and innocence. A lone Coal Tar flew by him, yawning widely, two others were trying to chew on Harry's shoelaces. They were really adorable for a spirits that were possessing dirt. And definitely much more interesting than Wizengamon.

The session finally ended, showing him mercy and letting keep his wand intact, which probably was a nice turn of events.

Harry wasn't sure anymore. He loved magic of course, but right now he would prefer a little bit of mundane in the mix. A year without anybody trying to kill him would be a really nice thing.

Dumbledore was not even looking at him, just leading him through corridors of Ministry to where lift was and Coal Tars were dancing happily around them or even floating on paper-planes of great importance. Harry walked carefully, so he wouldn't step on one of them accidentally, which made the whole venture even longer.

xxx

The moment Harry arrived back at the Grimmaur Place he was instantly swarmed by everybody who lived there, temporary or not. Once again, there was a lot of hugging, a lot of happy shouts and no way out. He just sighed and let them do whatever they wanted, because that was the fastest way to be done with all that mess and get away.

After he went through the hugging – which seemed to be not one, but two rounds this time – Mrs. Weasley dragged him to the kitchen and was close to force-feeding him, since he still was too thin in her protective eyes. Not that he had anything against the food, Mrs. Weasley was really great at cooking. He just got issue with how much of it he was supposed to fit inside his stomach.

At least after he was done, he could use the excuse of being exhausted by the stress of getting through the fight in the courtroom and find a lonely corner just for himself.

However most of Grimmaur Place was still out of commission. There were dangerous and dark things hidden in too many corners to count, so he could just wander deeper into the dim corridors and got lost for a few hours. Because of that, soon after he curled into one of the ancient, green armchairs with Suguro's book, Harry found himself having a company.

"So," Hermione said slowly, rocking on the balls of her feet, trying to not sound very awkward while starting this conversation. "What are you reading?"

"A book?" Harry answered carefully, closing the battered up volume. He wanted to find out what the ghostly goat exactly was and why it was hanging out in the court room instead of somewhere outside, like any other good farm animal. But he didn't feel really good with letting other people know what he was reading.

In the worst case scenario they would decide that this book was pure dark stuff and take it away, as always not listening to any sort of reason at all. And the book was borrowed. Probably at least two times, since Suguro had to ask around for the English version. Losing it would be out of the question.

"This isn't anything from library over here, isn't it?" Hermione asked. "Because I tried to borrow some book from there, you know, to learn something about what Purebloods are reading in their free time and all, but they said it was absolutely impossible and all of these volumes could be dangerous..."

"No," he shook his head. "I borrowed it when I was still at Privet Drive."

"Oh, good then," Hermione nodded. Then bit her lip.

"Look," she started again. "I know we made a terrible mistake and we shouldn't just let Professor Dumbledore decide about everything we do... but I just didn't know what I was supposed to do! I mean, he should know better, right? All that knowledge, years of experience... he's supposed to be right!"

"And then the world proved you wrong in funny way, huh?" Harry asked.

She blushed brightly, turning her gaze away, clearly ashamed.

Harry grimaced.

Damn, he probably was channeling Suguro a bit too much. The exorcist was definitely rubbing on him and in more than just one way. Mrs. Weasley already told him what she was thinking about his new and improved language. And Harry was pretty sure that Suguro was censoring himself, since talking in foreign language and all.

And right now, one of his friends looked hurt, because he didn't know when to bite his tongue and stop talking. Deciding to end this as soon as possible, he put the book away, on the table next to his armchair. Her eyes followed the movement.

"Sorry," Harry said. "I'm still angry, but I shouldn't take it out on you like that."

"It's okay," Hermione sighed. "I really should have think instead just following orders. So… are we finally talking to each other?"

"We always were talking to each other," he mumbled quietly.

"Yeah, right," the girl rolled her eyes in theatrical manner. "I was talking, you were brushing me off. And I get why, I just… I think you made your point…"

Luckily, Ginny showed up before the conversation turned any more awkward. Because awkward it was, Hermione was just going on and on and would do it for the next hour, just to make sure she said everything she wanted to.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"Just talking, I guess?" Harry answered quickly, before Hermione decided to shoo away the other girl. "And what are you doing?"

"Just being bored out of my scull, I guess," she shrugged. "Do you have any idea how dull all the jokes gets when you lived all your life with Fred and George under one roof?"

"Honestly, I don't know," Harry agreed. For a magical place, Grimmaur mansion was rather dull, since there was nothing for them to do other than carefully cleaning or doing their homework. Which was a problem, when it was already done.

"Huh," Ginny eyed the book with curious eyes and then picked it up and opened it, turning a few pages. "This is pretty wicked! Where you got that?"

"A friend borrowed it to me."

"He got an eye for wicked stuff, that's for sure!" she said, grinning widely, while stopping on particularly gruesome image. "Are these photos muggle? They aren't moving..."

Harry nodded.

She continued browsing through the book, barely blinking, completely fascinated by the strangeness of it all.

"Throwing knives at the windstorm?" Ginny frowned. "That just doesn't seems to be right!"

"You can always tell it you're strangling it with your belt..." Harry murmured. That sounded even more ridiculous than assaulting air with a knife.

"This is ridiculous!" Hermione winkled her nose. "Why are you even read something like that?"

"For fun?" he said, a little bit too quickly for it to sound really natural. But it would be quite hard to explain to people that he was seeing things they were unable to see. Considering how that woman in the court acted towards Mrs. Figg, the wizarding world was pretty sure that it saw it all.

"Well," Ginny shrugged. "We do have a vacation after all. He can read whatever he wants."

"But this is so... brutal!"

"Yeah," Ginny grinned. "Awesome!"

"I will never understand you two," Hermione shook her head.

Ginny just continued to flipping the pages in quick pace, with eyes wide open. A small blush of excitation crept up her cheeks as she was hungrily reading through bits and pieces randomly choosen from the content.

"Can I borrow it?" she asked.

"Uh, I think so…?" Harry said slowly, blinking. He was a bit surprised by her sudden interest in gruesome stories. But she was stuck here much longer than he or Hermione, so at this point anything different could pass as the most fascinating thing in her entire life. "Just be careful, it's not mine.

"Sure thing!" she almost jumped in excitation. "I will be totally careful, promise!"

And then she turned back on her heel and ran with the battered book hugged tightly in her arms.

"That was…" Hermione shook her head in confusion. "I have no idea what that was."

As soon as she finished the sentence, there was a loud thud coming from somewhere outside the room.

They looked at each other.

"You know what?" she murmured. "I'm going to check if she's okay. There were at least three false steps in the staircase and she seemed to be too excited to care where she put her feet, so…"

Harry was thinking of exactly the same thing, but since she was already halfway towards the doors, he decided to not follow her. Instead he just sighed and just changed his position, to be as comfortable as possible. Now he was without his book and alone and it looked like a neat opportunity for trying out how he would deal with the whole Zen meditation without Suguro being somewhere around. Sitting and just thinking was still somewhat strange for Harry.

But he barely managed to sit down, this time on the sofa so he could cross his legs, and take a deep breath before the doors opened again.

Figures, Harry thought, exhaling and opening his eyes. Of course he couldn't have a moment alone when the building was full of people who were worrying about him or just wanted to talk to him. Maybe in a day or two…

"So," Lupin started awkwardly, not sitting down but just standing there, like he expected to be banished from the room at any moment. "Everything ended up fine, yes?"

"I guess so?" Harry shrugged.

Sirius, who seemed to be attached by hip to his werewolf friend, at least he sat down instead of towering over people around him.

"You guess?" he asked, elbowing Harry.

"Well, you know, live without school, that would be something," Harry snickered.

"Yeah, sweet dreams," his Godfather grinned back. "But you're still a student and that's what's important, right?"

He didn't sound all that happy, Harry noticed.

"Anyway, Harry, since we have that awful thing with the ministry behind us," Remus started carefully. "Would you like to tell us something more how you spend your vacation?"

"Yeah, you seemed to be almost unhappy when the guys pulled you out of that house," Sirius pointed out.

Well, that could be quite puzzling for them, Harry had to agree. Usually the Privet Drive was like a prison for him, where only the work and unhappiness await. But this July was different and he really enjoyed it, the silence and not being forced to deal with all the dangers that seemed to gravity towards him every time he touched his wand.

"It got better," he said. "We found some sort of common language, I guess."

"And that new friend of yours?"

"He's fine," Harry said carefully. "Why are you asking?"

"Just trying to make up for the lost time, I guess!" Sirius gave him a toothy grin. "I should know what stuff you like, what sort of people you hang out with…"

"You know Hermione and Ron already," Harry pointed out.

"…do you have an eye on some girl!" Sirius continued happily, his smile widening when the man noticed the blush on Harry's face.

"I don't!" he protested, already feeling like his face was burning.

"Oh, are you sure?" Sirius playfully poked him into the ribs. "Because you seemed to be way to red for somebody who's innocent!"

"You're just asking all the weird questions!" Harry protested. He was falling deeper and deeper into a trap and couldn't do anything about that.

xxx

"And they took him?" Suguro asked, not quite able to believe what he was hearing. He wasn't around for a few days and this was what he was greeted with. "No hello, no kiss my ass, no nothing?"

"You got this in one," Vernon grunted unhappily. "They remembered that they had to send someone only after we started panicking it was the other group."

"Are you sure they are the good guys?" Ryuji massaged the back of his neck, grimacing. After meeting Seven Ryuji expected wizards to be annoying, but this was much more than he expected to deal with. Honestly, these people had no emotional intelligence whatsoever.

"They told us the bad guys would just kill us, so..." Vernon shrugged. "But sometimes it looks like they are not even considering us when they are doing their thing, good guys or not."

"Sounds like it," Suguro grimaced. Grabbing kid in the middle of the night, not letting him even use the phone to call his family definitely wasn't a nice move. Showing up the day later, after the family in question was about to start walking up the walls didn't seem fine to him either.

On the other hand, Dursley family managed to shake off negative effects of evil sucker surprisingly well, especially considering they spend years under its influence.

"And they took that blasted owl too!" Vernon continued his rant. "How in the world we are supposed to contact the boy without this freakish bird?!"

"Cell phones aren't mixing well with magic, aren't they?"

"No, they don't even work on their side," Vernon shook his head. "Ridiculous if you ask me."

"And what about that law issue?" Suguro frowned slightly. They're going to tell you what's going on?"

"Right now they told us only there's nothing to worry about," Vernon grunted. "As if!"

"So, nothing about these Dementors either," Suguro sighed.

"Not a word."

"We can send a patrol around, just to be sure," Suguro said, deciding to not explain how exactly these patrols were looking like. There was no reason to tell tales about how local tamer was able to summon swarm of locust or other insects to do her bidding. Bugs alone were freaking people out. No reason to scare them even more with talk about ghostly insects.

Just as Suguro was about to say his goodbyes, Dudley showed up at the corner of the street and greet them loudly, before jogging towards his house. He was red on the face and his breath was short.

Suguro frowned slightly at the sight of him.

"Don't you think it's a little too hot for running?"

"That's why I'm doing it in the morning!"

"This," the exorcist said slowly. "Is not the morning."

"Well, maybe for you," Dudley shrugged. "What you call a morning is the middle of the night of everybody else."

Suguro rolled his eyes.

"Well, at least try to remember about drinking a lot of water," he huffed. "Dehydration is not a funny thing."

Vernon snickered slightly, observing the interactions between these two. At first, he wasn't sure if letting Dudley go hang out with that cousin of his and the exorcist was a good idea. After all, Duds was his only, precious son, so Vernon ought to be careful with him and look carefully at what sort of people his boy was spending time with.

But Suguro was fretting even more over both of the boys than Petunia was, and she really was giving her best for Duddy. It wasn't the first time when he was nagging about getting enough fluids and for whatever reason, Vernon was always finding it hilarious. It was quite hard for him to not laugh the young exorcist in the face.

"Yeah, yeah," Dudley waved his hand, completely ignoring the stern glare. "Dad already told you about the fre...uh! magicians that took Harry, right?"

After Suguro nodded, Dudley told him about the Dementors showing up three days ago, since Harry hadn't the chance to do so himself, at least in not such great detail.

"Naturally, nobody else decided to explain why in the world these things were even out in the open?" Ryuji scowled, when the boy finally finished his story and the glass of water. After the conversation headed towards the stuff Mr. Dursley considered to be not normal, he rushed them both inside.

"Not a word," Vernon grunted. "And Petunia told me that these… things are supposed to be only in that prisons of theirs."

"Prison?" Suguro blinked. "Wizards are keeping these things shut?"

"It's the other way around, I think. These things happened to be prison guardians."

"Wait, what?" Ryuji hoped, that he understood wrong, but no. Apparently Wizards decided that soul-sucking monsters were a great and cheap working force. Apparently not only the devil wanted his payment in souls.


End file.
